Our Congress responded to the nation’s privacy needs in 2003, giving us the National Do Not Call Registry.
I run a Google Alert on my name and today it showed a link to information about me on MyLife.com. I created a profile so I could see who searched me, and you’ll never guess what I found.
This kind of public records fusion service is a growing personal privacy problem. We need a National Do Not Profile Registry.
So what did I find when I looked at my profile?
Hrm, 51 year old male, Headland, Alabama? Now who would that be? Do you recall right before the last election when I published TTFN: Tea Party Stalks Me & My Kids??
The deranged 51 year old male in Headland Alabama is Greg W. Howard. He’s the brilliant mind behind Twittergate, the man who outed me as the top Twitter operative for George Soros. This guy has a screw loose, he roams around Twitter, sooner or later menacing anyone who makes the mistake of interacting with him, and he has put out enough information to show that he has been passing my ex wife and kids’ home address around.
My address was well hidden before and when I moved due to the plumbing failure in my last rental I made really sure this new location is secure - neither lease nor utilities are in my name - I got an innocuous DBA so my name won’t show up on public records.
I accept that I’m going to get mental patients who develop a fascination with me if I’m a public figure, but this has gone past ridiculous, creepy, highly annoying, and it’s at the point where something WILL be done about it.
I’m not the only one dealing with a right wing media figure trying to incite violence against me. Take a look at poor Frances Fox Piven, beset by Glenn Beck’s whackos. She’s seventy eight now, and they’re threatening to kill her over some out of context quotes from something she wrote forty years ago.
And we can never forget the so called ‘Progressive Hunter’, Byron Williams. It’s just pure luck that kept the San Francisco based Tides Foundation from being another mass shooting site.
We need some regulation in this area.
I like that old friends can find me on Facebook or Twitter. I do not like that mental patients have access to public record fusion sites that would reveal my home address if I weren’t already taking steps to protect it.
There is a thriving market for such social networking sites, but they need to have positive identification of searchers and no cost ways for those being searched to see who is looking. I just happen to know the age and location of the person who is after me, and he happens to be ignorant enough to register with his real information as he cyberstalks me. This won’t always be the case for me, nor for that young female relative of yours who wishes to avoid that abusive former boyfriend.
This is an area of growth that is drawing a lot of entrepreneurs. We use some of the same search techniques to find, inform, and motivate voters. There are going to be a lot more things like MyLife.com and they all need a central location where they can check for a list of people who have decided that they do not wish to be profiled. Just like the National Do Not Call Registry the National Do Not Profile Registry would have a simple means for social networking sites to determine if a given person has requested to not be included.
I like all the innovation I see in this area to the point where I participate myself, creating software and systems that help ad hoc groups of people work together. But we need some rules for Personally Identifying Information (PII) on the internet, just as we have for phones.
Someone sent me this around midnight - it's a post within the last twelve hours from Howard. Maybe we'll finally see some law enforcement action on this guy.