Theos-Talk Archives (February 1998 Message tt00360)

In this day and age of computers and Internet, any time anyone posts a msg
on a maillist like this or newsgroup, they cannot keep their e-mail address
private. In addition anyone who has a telephone listed listing anywhere in
the country can be remotely searched and the telephone number and address
located. It is just like picking up the phone book and looking it up. The
search now can give you all this and also a map to the address. If one owns
a home or personal property, then it cannot be hidden either and you get
the address even if you have a unlisted telephone. Recently I found out
that in the public records of real estate listings, in addition you can
retrieve a floor plan of you home floor by floor. If anyone is active in
newsgroups one can look up all the messages one has posted and we can get a
profile of the person. Some time ago a friend of mine had posted a queer
msg on a local newsgroup and when I queried him tangentially, he was in a
state of shock. In addition for a small fee on can use a commercial service
which will get all kinds of further information. So no one should be
surprised if they find that information they consider is private is no
longer private due to the public availability of a lot of information.

mkr