<html><head><style type="text/css"><!-- DIV {margin:0px;} --></style></head><body><div style="font-family:courier,monaco,monospace,sans-serif;font-size:12pt"><div style="font-family: courier,monaco,monospace,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">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.<br><br><div style="font-family: times new roman,new york,times,serif; font-size: 12pt;">----- Forwarded Message ----<br>From: [group moderator] <info@meetup.com><br>To: [the_group]-announce@meetup.com<br>Subject: FYI / Meetups / PRIVACY notice / Please Read!<br><br>
Greetings, all -- <br><br>It recently came to my attention that it's possible <br>to locate Meetup profiles with a Google search. <br>I expected that might be the case with organizers, <br>but apparently it's the case for anyone signed up. <br><br>A person in one of our Meetup groups did a google <br>search on her legal name, and was dismayed to find <br>that it brought up her [group] profile. <br>She wrote me with a complaint, saying that she did <br>not want that information accessible to her family <br>and/or business customers; and she requested that <br>I remove it. <br><br>Unfortunately, I have no control over what sort of <br>information <a target="_blank" href="http://Meetup.com">Meetup.com</a> makes available to internet <br>search engines. Due to privacy concerns, most [members]<br>are careful not to use their legal <br>names when signing up for anything they don't want to <br>become public knowledge. (This applies to photos too.) <br><br>[...]
This goes not only for our groups, of course, <br>but for any and all Meetup groups. [TE: And, I might note, this<br>may even be true for "membership" within SGVLUG -- although<br>we don't have a true "membership roster", posting messages<br>to the group's address will get archived, and that archive is<br>searched/crawled by google and others -- we have instructions <br>on our site on how to avoid this using an X-NO-ARCHIVE flag]<br><br>You can check to see if your profile is available <br>via a search engine by just typing in the name that <br>you signed up under, and maybe the word "Meetup." <br>[sgvlug, or any other group/site were you would be concerned about being "associated with"]<br>That will most likely bring up your <a target="_blank" href="http://meetup.com">meetup.com</a> <br>personal profile page, with your member number. <br><br>On that page, you will find listed the various <br>Meetup groups that you belong to. There is an <br>option to
hide the list, for privacy. However, <br>even that might not be sufficient to totally <br>protect your privacy, since there are various <br>other ways that members interact with the group,<br>leaving comments and messages, etc. Also, you might <br>want to leave your meetup groups visible for some <br>reason, so folks can see what you're interested in. <br><br>The other option would be to change your user name. <br>If you're currently using your legal name, then <br>that might be a good idea. <br><br>[...] [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...]<br><br>There is no other way that I'm aware of to be safely <br>disentangled from the Google cache of your Meetup profile, <br>since it goes by your membership number. <br><br>Anyway: it's up to each individual how much privacy <br>you wish to maintain online. For some people just <br>hiding the list of their meetup groups will be enough, <br>while others will probably want to change their user <br>name; and a few people might even want to go through <br>the process of leaving <a target="_blank" href="http://meetup.com">meetup.com</a>, and re-joining. <br><br>I'm sorry that this is all so complicated and vexsome; <br>and perhaps an unpleasant surprise. I would suggest <br>that anyone who values their online privacy might want <br>to make their preferences known to <a target="_blank" href="http://Meetup.com">Meetup.com</a>. It's hard <br>to imagine they're not aware that people would be unhappy <br>at having their profiles made publicly
accessible via <br>Google; but apparently they have not received too many <br>complaints about it, if they're still doing it. <br><br>[...] [signature]<br><br>PS: Another privacy concern that I imagine goes <br>without saying: Don't use your email address at <br>work as your <a target="_blank" href="http://meetup.com">meetup.com</a> contact address, if you <br>don't want your boss or employer or coworkers to <br>know that you're a [member] of [group]. It's easy to <br>sign up for various free email services. (Such as <br><a target="_blank" href="http://Hotmail.com">Hotmail.com</a>, which has now become <a target="_blank" href="http://Live.com">Live.com</a>, <br>and part of MSN, I believe.)<br>
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