[Genealib] Genealogy and privacy

[John Wylie]

Hello Kathy,			4 March 08

I understand your skepticism. 

Your test requiring free information, may be too limiting. Most of the "good
stuff" about you can be bought. Those who want to know your personal
information are of two types. Type one is legal and usually pays an expert
to find out all about you. These are often employers, but can include rental
agencies, romance matching services and so forth. An associate recently
purchased two foreclosed homes and is now trying to rent them. She pays a
firm to do background checks on potential renters. I wasn't surprised when
she told me about one applicant who has been charged for kiting checks a
number of times, but was never indicted. Another had twice forfeited
deposits on apartments more than a decade ago, while a third was raising
children by three men, none of whom she had married. Of course she had
credit and employment details on all applicants, especially the negative
stuff. 

Type two users are the bad guys. They too pay for some of the data they
want, but since much of the most private information on you has been stolen
(whether you've been told or not) from somewhere, they use both the legal
and the black markets to get what they want. 

However, things will soon get worse. It's becoming a reality that every
non-encrypted message, like this one, that travels the web is saved forever
and will someday be searched and found. Not easily today, but with emerging
technology, all of your email, public and private, will be available in the
future. And I suspect the bad guys will be next in line after the NSA (and
Homeland Security) to read it. Who pays the most, gets the most, that
capitalism. 

Another place where you've lost privacy is on websites. Visit
www.archive.org and select a URL where your name does not appear, but used
to. Most likely you'll find the old website information in that archive.
Think about it this way, our aggregate storage capacity grows faster than we
generate data, so assume that "everything digital" is stored somewhere. The
only real issue is how to find it. Data-mining is very much a growth
profession. 

An acquaintance here in Dallas hosted a "node" for the old Fidonet, back in
ancient times (before 1990.) He shut that down in the mid 90s when the world
wide web was launched. He still has some huge backup hard drives that held,
hold your breath here, 810 megabytes each (my home computer currently has a
500 gigabyte hard drive, nearly 1000 time larger than he used just a few
years ago.) As you can imagine, these old drives are filled with messages
that passed through his "node" for about a decade. How many computers does
your typical email travel through today? (check the header on this message
and it will open you eyes to a portion of the computers (nodes) that
processed it.) Beyond the NSA, who else is storing them? I doubt that anyone
really knows. But I don't post any email I don't want my
great-great-grand-daughters to someday read.

Regards,    

John Wylie
Professional Genealogist.

PS  In a five-minute search I found that you are about 46 years old (on
Stevemorse.org I could get your actual birth date) graduated from Clifton
High, have an MLS from Rutgers, and your salary in 2006 was $XX,XXX (I
substituted an X for the actual amounts listed for your salary found on the
sixth hit of my first search.) You may live at XX Ploch Rd, phone is
9X3-8X1-8x2X, live with your 90 year old parents and husband or brother
Fredrick Grimshaw. If I'd paid a $9.99 fee I could probably have obtained
your New Jersey Driver's License number, home phone, postal address, email
addresses and household members names. If I was dishonest and pretended I
was a merchant, I could probably have obtained your SSN, and credit
information. 
  

-----Original Message-----
From: genealib-bounces at mailman.acomp.usf.edu
[mailto:genealib-bounces at mailman.acomp.usf.edu] On Behalf Of Grimshaw, Kathy
Sent: Tuesday, March 04, 2008 12:49 PM
To: genealib at mailman.acomp.usf.edu
Subject: [Genealib] Genealogy and privacy


As an information professional who is constantly on the Internet, I'm a
little confused by the the comments from people saying that there is no
personal privacy anymore. Except for information voluntarily posted
about yourself, the only information available online about you is the
information that has always been available in print form, such as phone
listings, property owner information and newspaper articles. I challenge
anyone using free sources available to the general public on the
Internet to find out my social security number, mother's maiden name, or
where I was born. 

Kathy Grimshaw-Haven
Reference Librarian
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