Online Privacy

Online phone directories enable anyone, anywhere, to find your phone number and street address. More and more government information, such as property ownership, voter registration and court filings are being made available online. Many newspapers print the full text of stories and classifieds online. School websites publish student information and sometimes photos. Professional and club newsletters may unwittingly reveal things about you that you'd rather the whole world didn't know.

Other sites, such as Classmates.com and Intelius offer fee-based access to certain information such as school classmates, criminal records, credit files, and background checks. In some cases, you don't even have to prove that you have a need to know certain non-public or semi-public data about other people.

Try this exercise: Look for your name in a search engine. Then try your local newspaper website, your child's school, and your college alumni site. Check what's available about you or your family members at genealogical servers, social networking sites, Usenet, Web archives and in club newsletters. Here are some starting points for research:

• Google - General Purpose Search Engine
• InfoSpace - Phone & Address Lookup
• Usenet Search Engine
• Myspace - Social Networking
• Live Journal - Social Networking
• Genealogy Research
• Web Archives

You may be surprised at what others, especially if they are motivated and savvy, can learn. A July 2002 NY Times article explores this further and offers some tips on how to limit what others can learn about you online.

By the way, the NY Times website requires a (free) registration. If this bothers you from a privacy standpoint, you can create a login with bogus information, or use the BugMeNot service to find free, anonymous logins for NY Times and other popular sites.

If you're also concerned about the privacy of data on your own computer, see also Clearing Browser History.

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