[SGVLUG] Fw: FYI: Meetup.com & PRIVACY isn't what you might think...

[Chris Louden]

On Fri, May 23, 2008 at 6:45 PM, Tom Emerson <osnut at pacbell.net> wrote:
> The moderator of a "meetup" group that I've joined recently posted a warning
> message about the meetup site and how your "privacy" might not be as
> protected as you might think.  The actual message that was posted was quite
> long, and as the "group" might be considered "dubious" in certain circles
> [think "2600", but for non-techies...], I've been asked to excise even the
> references to the group itself.
>
> ----- Forwarded Message ----
> From: [group moderator] <info at meetup.com>
> To: [the_group]-announce at meetup.com
> Subject: FYI / Meetups / PRIVACY notice / Please Read!
>
> Greetings, all --
>
> It recently came to my attention that it's possible
> to locate Meetup profiles with a Google search.
> I expected that might be the case with organizers,
> but apparently it's the case for anyone signed up.
>
> A person in one of our Meetup groups did a google
> search on her legal name, and was dismayed to find
> that it brought up her [group] profile.
> She wrote me with a complaint, saying that she did
> not want that information accessible to her family
> and/or business customers; and she requested that
> I remove it.
>
> Unfortunately, I have no control over what sort of
> information Meetup.com makes available to internet
> search engines. Due to privacy concerns, most [members]
> are careful not to use their legal
> names when signing up for anything they don't want to
> become public knowledge. (This applies to photos too.)

That statement is not entirely true. I previously used Meetup and was
an Organizer. There are several settings that can be enabled to
prevent non-members of the group from viewing content. Specifically
making the group private. The protected areas are then not able to be
searched (forums, polls, etc.). However I do not recall if profiles
was included or not.

I recall sending out a similar message to all my members and asked if
they wanted me to change the settings to protect their privacy.
Overall consensus was no, leave it as is.

>
> [...] This goes not only for our groups, of course,
> but for any and all Meetup groups. [TE: And, I might note, this
> may even be true for "membership" within SGVLUG -- although
> we don't have a true "membership roster", posting messages
> to the group's address will get archived, and that archive is
> searched/crawled by google and others -- we have instructions
> on our site on how to avoid this using an X-NO-ARCHIVE flag]
>
> You can check to see if your profile is available
> via a search engine by just typing in the name that
> you signed up under, and maybe the word "Meetup."
> [sgvlug, or any other group/site were you would be concerned about being
> "associated with"]
> That will most likely bring up your meetup.com
> personal profile page, with your member number.
>
> On that page, you will find listed the various
> Meetup groups that you belong to. There is an
> option to hide the list, for privacy. However,
> even that might not be sufficient to totally
> protect your privacy, since there are various
> other ways that members interact with the group,
> leaving comments and messages, etc. Also, you might
> want to leave your meetup groups visible for some
> reason, so folks can see what you're interested in.
>
> The other option would be to change your user name.
> If you're currently using your legal name, then
> that might be a good idea.
>
> [...] [TE: the next section dealt with ways to remove your name from the
> meetup "profile" page, but if you've been a member longer than a few months,
> it is likely to have been "cached" by the search engines -- suffice it to
> say, it's a difficult genie to get back into the bottle...] [TE: Ultimately,
> the "final solution" is to leave and re-join meetup.com as a new member,
> taking care to not spill the beans that you are the same person that just
> left...]
>
> There is no other way that I'm aware of to be safely
> disentangled from the Google cache of your Meetup profile,
> since it goes by your membership number.
>
> Anyway: it's up to each individual how much privacy
> you wish to maintain online. For some people just
> hiding the list of their meetup groups will be enough,
> while others will probably want to change their user
> name; and a few people might even want to go through
> the process of leaving meetup.com, and re-joining.
>
> I'm sorry that this is all so complicated and vexsome;
> and perhaps an unpleasant surprise. I would suggest
> that anyone who values their online privacy might want
> to make their preferences known to Meetup.com. It's hard
> to imagine they're not aware that people would be unhappy
> at having their profiles made publicly accessible via
> Google; but apparently they have not received too many
> complaints about it, if they're still doing it.
>
> [...] [signature]
>
> PS: Another privacy concern that I imagine goes
> without saying: Don't use your email address at
> work as your meetup.com contact address, if you
> don't want your boss or employer or coworkers to
> know that you're a [member] of [group]. It's easy to
> sign up for various free email services. (Such as
> Hotmail.com, which has now become Live.com,
> and part of MSN, I believe.)
>
>
>