Date: Mon, 02 May 2005 00:53:43 -0400
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>
From: "Mike B." <omni at omniphile.com>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: The May 2005 WSFA Journal is available online
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>

At 11:39 PM 5/1/05 -0400, Keith F. Lynch wrote:

>search engines.  (Except for members' current street addresses and
>email addresses, which are snipped.)  Please speak to me (politely)
>if you have any privacy concerns about this.  Thank you.

I think that the phone numbers should be censored out as well as the
addresses...including the rest of the address that is currently included.

I don't know whether the practice of publishing address changes in the
Journal was ended, or just temporarily discontinued, and I doubt that my
current info is in any of the Journals on-line (though I haven't had time
to read them all and there's no search function to scan through them
quickly), but it is certainly possible that some past or current members
are still at the addresses that were included in the older editions, and
since at the time there was no expectation that these would ever be made
public these people would have had no reason to object to this information
being included...it only went to club members after all.  Today, with the
information being published world-wide, they may very well object and I
don't think we should be doing such publishing without asking first...and
since that isn't practical, just not doing it.

Some of us pay the phone company not to give out our phone numbers, and
having them put up on the web is not really welcome.  I'm not all that
worried about my phone numbers from places I moved from long ago, since
those were long ago disconnected, but current information is for use by and
within WSFA, not for the whole world.  I get enough sales calls from those
who use computers to dial every possible number in an exchange, and from
those I've had business with in the past...and, really pissing me off,
those they sold the number to (I NEVER knowingly do business again with
anyone who does that), and I don't want to start getting calls from those
who scavenge numbers and addresses from the web too.  Same thing goes for
SPAM and e-mail addresses.

What is the benefit to including people's addresses (minus street address)
and phone numbers in the web version of what was, at the time most were
printed, an effectively internal newsletter?  Why was street address chosen
as "private info", while town, state, zip and phone number were not?

There could also be legal implications to publishing information like this
without permission.  Is there a lawyer in the house?  Does the phrase
"reckless endangerment" apply to this?  I'm thinking "estranged ex-spouses"
tracking down those they are estranged from using this information and the
trackee blaming WSFA for making it so easy to do the tracking, and the
treasury disappearing into some defense attorney's pocket in the ensuing
lawsuit...regardless of who wins in the end.

I'm not sure how worrisome the lawsuit thing should be, I'll leave that to
those with legal credentials, but good manners should dictate not giving
out personal contact information without permission.  If the info was given
to WSFA in the past, there's probably implicit permission for use within
WSFA, but I don't see that as extending to publishing it on the web for all
and sundry to use for whatever purpose they choose.

-- Mike B.
--
Hello, my name is David Rhodes....