Spokeo and privacy

From Suzi:My co-worker sent this message to all of us at work. The synopsis below is hers; I haven't really had time to check this site out, but it appears to be worth investigating. I did try searching for myself on the site, but I think my "two names" (Suzi and Suzanne) confused it. Post a comment if you try this out yourself!

"This website culls the information about individuals from public records, social networking sites and so on. You can remove your listing if you wish. Mine (before I requested it be removed) was somewhat accurate – this publicly accessible listing had my address and a picture of a neighbors’ house (I said it was somewhat accurate), my age, gender, race, indication of how many people in the household (including children,) and listing of interests (for free) as well as access to pictures (for a fee).

The website is www.spokeo.com. The link to remove your information is: http://www.spokeo.com/privacy The site was very slow at responding. (There seem to be a slew of emails going around about this site, so maybe they are being inundated?)

A good write-up in plain language explaining the system it uses, the “whack-a-mole” method of trying to block all these aggregators, and the possible lack of success at requesting removal (though it worked for me) can be found at:
http://www.snopes.com/computer/internet/spokeo.asp (look under the “Origins” section of the page)

Class handouts are now posted

If you missed a day of class or can't find one of the hand-outs, they are all posted here

http://bit.ly/WLNewTech

Each hand-out is downloadable as a PDF file. Enjoy!

Ham radio growing in the age of Twitter

This NPR story discusses ham radio and how it is still a popular form of communication, even in the Internet age with many other tools available.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125586086

[The image above is courtesy of Fox Photos/Getty Images]

Hand-outs will be posted online

Hi, Everyone. I also greatly enjoyed this experience and will be happy to correspond with anyone via email. I spoke with our Extended University Webmaster yesterday, and we have a place we can post all the hand-outs from the course on the Wonderlust Web site.

I'll post that link by the end of the week. Thanks again for a great experience.

Suzi

Wonderlust handouts

Thanks again for your participation - I certainly enjoyed meeting all of you and your active participation in the class!

Send me an email (rwolff@montana.edu) and I will send you a complete set of the class hand outs.


Richard