Angry E Mailers Demand Action

Jackie Mason | July 13, 2006
[hidden by request]

Lori Lancaster | July 13, 2006
[hidden by request]

David Mitzman | July 14, 2006
Hey everyone, here's a shock: online petitions mean and do exactly dick (yes, that's nothing). Read away: (link)

Jackie Mason | July 14, 2006
[hidden by request]

David Mitzman | July 14, 2006
It's going to make a lot of people look like silly asses. Also, the "don't buy gas on this day" NEVER works. Not enough people can commit to that and all it would do is create a simple oversupply for not even one day.

Kris Weberg | July 16, 2006
Actually, it will hurt gas station owners a bit by disrupting their profit projections for the day. What it won't do is harm the people it's aiming to hurt. The gas you buy has already been paid for by station owners; the oil companies already have the money, as do the foreign and domestic producers of that oil

Snopes dot com debunks this one yearly, by the way.

Kris Weberg | July 16, 2006
Ah, Dave beat me to it. I miss being able to tell what the links are TO without passing over them with the cursor. But then, I'm also notoriously lazy.

David Mitzman | July 16, 2006
Hehe, so lazy. If you commit yourself to being surly you would fit right in with the Teamsters.

Jackie Mason | July 20, 2006
[hidden by request]

Lori Lancaster | July 20, 2006
[hidden by request]

Jackie Mason | July 20, 2006
[hidden by request]

Adrianne Rodgers | August 12, 2006
Ugh, I know! What with all the sickos out there, you might as well just lie down on a silver platter and cover yourself in olive oil. Naturally, I had my info deleted straightaway. Don't need no one sniffing around.

Kris Weberg | August 12, 2006
Apparently I'm on there too.

But really, I'm not surprised about this -- you can learn most of what they have with Google and some persistence. My address and so forth is public info because of things like school registration and Amazon. We're required on a daily basis to give up a fair amount of information regarding our locations and names to get basic services and goods.

Sites like this don't uncover the data, they just do the twenty or thirty minutes' work of finding and collating it. It may be shocking to see it all put together like that, but none of this is all that hard to do with basic web tools.

Jackie Mason | August 13, 2006
[hidden by request]

Amy Austin | August 13, 2006
Well, suppose (like myself) you were looking for an old friend or relative, Jackie... wouldn't you want to be able do so with relative ease and success? Frankly, I feel that the fact that I have to *pay* for what essentially amounts to "public information" is really a deterrant! I mean, yes, I want to locate a few people pretty badly... but not badly enough to possibly waste a *minimum* of about $15 per head for the very basic stuff.

Now... before you go thinking what a rotten friend/family member I must be not to be willing to pay a rather nominal fee for information that could reunite me with people I supposedly care about, you have to realize that the information -- from what I have seen -- runs the very distinct possibility of being out of date. I recognized from Ed's and my own information that we have both had two more addresses in the last two years than the most recent ones on record for us (different ones for each of us, BTW)! You will also notice that some of these "databases" make a point of disclosing "last known address" or "last reported," along with a date... that I have seen be from as much 3-4 years ago. A good friend of mine was killed in an auto accident August 2001, and yet I have seen her name and information posted with a "last reported" date as late as 2003! (And yes, I am certain it was her -- along with having a rather uncommon name, I knew her birthday and last whereabouts -- I was looking for her obituary, because I had never actually seen/read it. I was at sea when she died, and -- little did I know -- about to have yet another really bad month!)

Edit: Sorry... 2002 -- she's in Zaba, I just looked -- one year later not quite as bad as two.

So, yeah... I hardly think that anyone is apt to use this to come and "get you" -- (unless you have a seriously hard-core stalker ;-D) -- was your current address in there??? I really think that if someone wants to find you that badly, then it's quite likely that: a) it's someone by whom you may actually *want* to be found; and/or b) they may be smart/desperate enough to hire a professional (i.e., a detective) to reliably do so.

There's also the distinct possiblity of people like employers, lessors, creditors and such wanting to see if your nose really is clean... although I find that a bit distasteful, even when disclosed. What sucks even more is having to go to the local courthouse -- like I did recently -- and *pay* to have your own employment background check done!!! Amazing. Once again, though... unless they are "mom & pop"-type set-up (like small business hiring or landlord, for instance), I seriously doubt that these folks are using Zaba and paying for their report... I'm sure they pay one-time or periodic fees for the services of a professional database that gives them "the complete goods" on you.

Kris Weberg | August 13, 2006
I'd wager that those "detailed reports" aren't that detailed, and would basically just cover a bit more publicly available info (where you went to school and college, for instance). Even something like police or FBI background chekcs aren't liable to turn up much more than your credit rating and any criminal or civil cases you've been involved in, after all, and these Zaba folks surely haven't got that kind of access.

Scott Hardie | August 14, 2006
Am I the only one who sees parallels between this and the pro-Napster "information wants to be free" support for file-sharing? I recently said that one of the only remaining taboos is an attack on individual civilians who aren't public figures, and that may be one reason why sharing private information belonging to a record company isn't considered wrong but sharing public information belonging to an individual person is. The spread of Zaba and similar services is another case of the Internet replacing traditional services, in this case private investigators who you used to pay to dig up this information when you really needed it. I don't embrace the convenient access to that kind of public information so much as I accept the inevitability of it.

Sorry about your friend, Amy. That's no way to remember someone. I still received my father's junk mail five years after he died, and the people who live in that house now probably still get it.

Amy Austin | August 14, 2006
Ha! I bet that's true. See... just goes to show how you don't die -- you just become an exquisite corpse... ;-)

Adrianne Rodgers | August 14, 2006
I suppose sites like that are inevitable. I think the thing that really shocked me was just seeing it all in one place. Somehow, the thought that you could have a P.I. do the same thing doesn't creep me out as much because that person would have to find a reputable P.I., who, in turn, would have to spend hours at the courthouse piecing together an intelligence file, and if I've lived in more than one state (which I have), or I happen to use my middle name more often than my first, or something, then....heaven help them. Even though, to my knowledge, I have no stalkers, it's still a little bit of a creepy thought to know that the next slightly-off guy that I blow off at a bar, who'd never have the initiative to hire a professional, can go online, and suddenly I have a letter on my doorstep written in blood.

Aaron Shurtleff | August 14, 2006
Well, then don't blow off slightly-off guys at bars! *sorry sorry sorry*

And I'm with Scott on this one (for once!). It's going to happen eventually, and the information is all out there for anyone to find. I don't have anything to hide, nor do I have enemies (as far as I know...I do have psycho ex-gfs, but who doesn't?). I'm not going to worry so much about it...

This from the technophobe himself. ;)

Jackie Mason | August 15, 2006
[hidden by request]

Scott Hardie | August 16, 2006
This is going to open up a whole lot more celebrity stalking, which will then give us a whole lot more invasive articles about how celebrities have been stalked.

I get letters on my doorstep written in blood, but they're usually from the apartment complex management. Miss a few water bills and those people get pissed.

Amy Austin | August 23, 2006
Snopes on ZabaSearch (one of their Top 25)