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| Subject: | [gislist] This just in...the light and the end of the tunnel for
online privacy...well, it's actually a freight train.. |
| Date: |
12/23/2003 01:10:01 PM |
| From: |
Anthony Quartararo |
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For those of you still insisting that you have a reasonable expectation of
privacy online..and a not-so-glamorous spotlight for our industry's
technology..
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/internet/12/23/online.mapping.ap/index.html
"(AP) -- Serial killer Maury Travis used an online mapping service to show a
newspaper reporter where he dumped a body. A former Las Vegas exotic dancer
convicted of stalking and harassing her ex-lover posted a map on the Web
with directions to the married man's home.
Internet mapping services are powerful and simple: Type a phone number into
Google or other sites for a map with door-to-door directions. Finding
someone has never been easier.
Now those resources are provoking a backlash. Spooked people worried about
stalkers or worse are striking their particulars from phone and Internet
listings.
Count Sonjia Kenya among them.
The 30-year-old is no stranger to the Internet but was stunned recently to
learn how easy it is to go online and get directions to her front door. All
it takes is her phone number.
"I was appalled and petrified as a single woman living in New York," Kenya
said. She vows never again to give her phone number to potential suitors.
Many home addresses are attainable through a variety of public records and
telephone listings. As well, reverse directories that let someone look up an
address by phone number have been available at libraries or for sale
commercially for years.
But many Internet sites that gather that kind of data now make it possible
for fast, do-it-yourself desktop sleuthing, some for free and some for a
fee.
Search engine provider Google Inc. added a phone number-map lookup feature
more than two years ago.
There's also FindPeople.com, WhitePages.com and Switchboard.com, among
others. If the sites don't have a direct link to a map, users can go on
their own to such free sites as Yahoo! Maps, MapQuest, or Microsoft Corp.'s
MapPoint. Tens of millions of people use those mapping services each month
to help them get places.
Navigation Technologies Corp., which supplies the digital roadmaps used by
those Web sites, has seen revenue more than double in three years, to $165.8
million in 2002. It is expected to top $200 million this year.
The Internet features are convenient tools for everyone, whether to look up
a long lost friend or relative -- or with malicious intent.
Earlier this month, Steven Sutcliffe of Manchester, New Hampshire, who had
been fired by Global Crossing Ltd., was convicted of identity theft and use
of the Internet to threaten company executives. He had created a Web site
that included employees' Social Security numbers and maps to some of their
homes. Sutcliffe, who represented himself during the final weeks of trial,
had told the jury he "was just publishing information."
An animal rights group, Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, has posted on its
Web site point-and-click map listings, including the home addresses of
executives and affiliates of England's Huntingdon Life Sciences Ltd. The
tactic is legal under free-speech laws but has coincided with a rise in
protests outside the homes of people connected to Huntingdon, prompting
dozens of firms to sever their ties with the research lab.
By all accounts, however, the popularity of Internet maps has more to do
with benefits than sinister uses.
Online maps and driving directions have become a must-have for business Web
sites as more consumers treat the Internet as an information appliance, said
Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet and American Life Project.
"For a lot of people now, especially those with broadband connections, the
first place they go to for information is online," Rainie said. "But people
are still warming up to the idea that lots of information about them is
online."
In a 2002 survey, Pew found that one in four Internet users have typed their
own names into a search engine to see what information about them is on the
Web. And a quarter of those people were surprised by how much data about
them was online, Rainie said.
Privacy concerns have led a "small number" of people to request removal from
the Google phone number-mapping feature, said Google spokesman David Krane.
He would not say how many have done so.
After Kenya got an e-mail alerting her to the feature, she immediately
filled out the Google form to get delisted.
But then Kenya turned around and used the same tool and other online
features to check on a man who had asked her out.
"I'm upset that it intrudes my privacy," said Kenya. "But at the same time,
I'm trying to get as much information as I can from the Internet."
"
Best Regards,
Anthony Quartararo
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