California Senator Gets Confused Over Google Phone Book

from the let's-try-that-again... dept

A few months back, these "urgent" emails were getting passed around complaining about Google's phone directory feature. If you have a listed phone number, you can put it into Google, and it will return your listing, along with a map to where you live. This is all public information. After the initial hype, most people realized this wasn't a big deal at all. Now, however, a California state Senator has apparently received the email and freaked out. He's somehow made the connection between that and identity theft and is raising a big stink about it. The connection is pretty weak. He says that someone may enter your phone number (where they got it, he doesn't say...) figure out where you live, go to your house, steal your mail and then go on to commit identity theft. The fact that someone could (oh no!) pick up the local phone book and do the same thing doesn't seem to occur to the guy. Even more to the point, the fact that someone could just (oh no!) walk down the street and open your mailbox and do the same thing doesn't seem to occur to him either. The information is publicly available, so this makes no difference. The threat of identity theft occurring directly from this feature is slim to none - and I'm sure most folks involved with identity theft will tell you they have much better methods that don't involve stealing anyone's mail.

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  1.  

    No Subject Given

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    Anonymous Coward, Nov 7th, 2003 @ 2:40pm

    And stealing mail is a federal offense, isn't it? So you definitely want to avoid doing that. Is identity theft a federal offense yet?

    reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  2.  

    Re: No Subject Given

    icon
    Mike (profile), Nov 7th, 2003 @ 2:58pm

    That's right: Google is a stepping stone to crime.

    reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  3.  

    Re: No Subject Given

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    suzi, Nov 7th, 2003 @ 11:36pm

    Google also has a way you can get de-listed from their directory. I got that email months ago. I emailed the person who started that particular chain and told her the facts and to quit the hype. I hate those kind of emails, just like the urband legends that people keep sending and sending.

    reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  4.  

    Re: No Subject Given

    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, Nov 10th, 2003 @ 8:22am

    Inter-state fraud?

    Yeah, that's about as Federal as you can get without going RICO.

    reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]


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