He’s out there looking for you

By Elaine Viets

"Dear Miss Viets:

"I saw you on TV and you are not too fat. I would like to marry you, but the doctors say I can never touch another woman again."

Brrr. My self-appointed fiancé also sent me a poem called "Darkness, Blackness and Very Bad Smells."

The return address was the state institute for the criminally insane. That sent chills down my spine, and they had nothing to do with Halloween.

The letter was unsigned, but I called the head of the asylum. He knew who I was talking about. "Oh, him. You don’t have to worry about him."

"Why not?"

"He likes to send letters to the President. The Secret Service keeps a close watch on him."

The asylum head said it was doubtful my would-be lover would be out anytime soon. He also said he couldn’t make the man quit sending the letters.

Fortunately, I only got one. That was several years ago, when I worked for a newspaper and had a local TV show. This wasn’t the only weirdo I’ve encountered.

How about the library talk where a man asked how many sixes were in my name? Three sixes were the mark of the Biblical beast in his mind, and apparently I had them all over me.

"I want you to write my life story," he said.

"Sorry," I said. "I’m under contract."

"Well, my story would sell a lot better than yours."

I asked a guard to walk me to my car after the event. I wasn’t toughing this one out. I never saw that character again, either.

When I worked in Hollywood, Florida, a man with a lot of homemade tattoos left love letters on my car windshield, along with a pack of off-brand cigarettes. As a final tribute, he put the keys to his Harley on my landlord’s front porch with yet another letter. Since this was South Florida, my landlord thought the love letters were for him.

"Call the police," a cop friend told me.

"I don’t want to bother them," I said.

"Your murder will generate a lot more paperwork," the practical cop said. "We like to prevent things."

I put the love letters and cigarettes in a ziplock bag, and called the Hollywood police. A streetwise officer figured out my admirer was a drifter who lived in a run-down apartment three doors down. The drifter spent his days smoking those off-brand cigarettes on the apartment’s porch. The streetwise cop brought the guy over to apologize.

"I’m very sorry," the man said. "My behavior was inappropriate."

He didn’t look like the sort of person who used "inappropriate" often. He vanished three days later.

The American Psychological Association said the "overwhelming majority of stalkers are male. It is estimated that eight percent of women have been stalked at some point during their lifetime."

Here’s something that will freeze your blood. Your stalker can now get a free map to your home, just by typing in your phone number on Google.

Valerie, a single friend, sent me a much-forwarded warning that "Google has implemented a new feature which enables you to type a telephone number into the search bar, hit ‘enter,’ and you will be given the person’s name and address. If you then hit MapQuest, you will get a map to the person’s house.

"Everyone should be aware of this," the email said. "It’s a nationwide reverse telephone book. If your children give out their phone number, someone can now look it up to find out where they live. The safety issues are obvious and alarming."

I went to Google.com and typed in my phone number. There was my husband’s name and a map to our condo. I clicked on the Removal form.

Another law enforcement officer told me to check 411.com. That site also had our phone number and address.

"I always get an unlisted number for home," the officer said. "I run all my bills through a post office box and try to ‘layer’ myself in case a nut job was out there. With the Internet and if you own a home, there’s so much information that’s public domain or available for a few dollars through a service."

What can you do?

Remove your name from these sites. If you discover another site giving out your phone number and address, take the time to remove yourself.

Before some weirdo does it for you.

Comments

[William Simon]

Way back when, the Internet got all its information from public records, and we've all learned they are not terribly accurate. I moved to Texas in 1982, but, according to the State of Florida DMV, until 2003 I still lived on Miami Beach. Granted, my drivers license had expired, but supposedly I still lived there.

Google and 411.Com initially got their information from the phone companies. If you're listed in the phone book, you're listed on the sites. It's good people now have the option of "opting out" and getting their information removed from the sites, but it's out there somewhere. Previously, you had to pay for an unlisted number; if you didn't pay you got listed, no arguments.

Your LE friend has it right, Elaine. I've used an alternate mailing address and unlisted phone number for many years. I grew up in a home where the phone was never listed, and a careless mail delivery person plus an apathetic apartment staff back in 1983 taught me the advantage of a rented mailbox.

And by NO means am I making light of what could have been a very serious situation, but I'd have loved to have been there when Mr. Tattoos apologized for his "inappropriate" behavior. If it hadn't been so scary, I'd ask how you kept a straight face..:)

[michele]

Elaine, the other thing to mention is that Google earth has a photograph of your house, and mine, and everybody else's so your stalker can figure out which window to climb through. People get bent out of shape about the government, but by far the scariest invasions of privacy these days are by large corporations, and because they're private players it's almost impossible to do anything about it.

Just by coincidence, I had some people over to dinner last night and one of them works for Google. He said that if you use gmail (owned by Google) your private emails are being monitored by Google for advertising purposes. If you start emailing with your sister about shoes, shoe advertisements will pop up on the sidebar!

[Nancy Martin]

The perfect blog for Halloweeen. It scared the wits out of me!

[janetlynn13]

superpages.com also has many listings. You can opt out but it's not easy to find.

Also remember, the big delivery companies use these sites to deliver your pkgs if your address is incorrect, so if you opt out and start having pkg problems, you will know why.

Even scarier, in our county, the assessment website lists your name, address, date you bought your house, your mortgage company, picture and description of your house, map, etc. For EVERYONE, and you can't opt out. Great when you are looking to buy a house - aweful for privacy.

[Jane K. Cleland]

Oh, wow. You are such a great writer, Elaine, your essay just quivers with passion. I recently read that something like 25 percent of women murder victims were killed by someone who first stalked them.

[Kathy Reschini Sweeney]

THANK YOU Elaine! Our phone number is unlisted, but you can find way too much about us from our office number.

How do you opt out of these? Do you have to call customer service?

And Michele - that is the end of my g-mail account. WTF? I expect to get crap from the grocery store when I use my card there, but e-mails?!

What a great legacy we're leaving - the term 'expectation of privacy' has virtually no meaning these days.

[Elaine Viets]

Snopes.com has the intructions on how to "opt out." Here's the link
http://www.snopes.com/computer/internet/google.asp

[William Simon]

There IS no privacy anymore. None. Which is scary.

I'm one step from junking Gmail. It's gotten too slow and cludgy, now this nonsense. Big Brother is everydamnwhere.....

[Elaine Viets]

Be sure to check your children's phone numbers and anyone in your household who has a different last name.
And William, I didn't dare laugh. Not with the huge cop glowering at my admirer. I did laugh at my landlord, who thought the letters were for him.

[jodi l]

Yikes! I found the removal options for 4ll and Google, but the scariest one is superpages.com. It has all my names, middle initials, maiden name, you "name it". I can't figure out how to remove me from that list. Janetlynn, do you know how? Thank goodness I never bothered with gmail! I get enough spam now.

[Kerry, The Martial Tart]

Thanks, Elaine, for the info on 411.com. I'd already opted out on Google (and just verified that it worked); now I've done the 411-thing as well.

As someone who deals with hundreds of college students every semester, some of whom earn grades they're not happy with, I do worry about privacy and safety issues. Until recently, though, they focused primarily on "Do they know which car in the parking lot is mine?", not "Do they know where I live."

Halloween indeed . . .

[Clea Simon]

Thank you, Elaine. When I started reading today's post, I thought you were going to turn it into a Halloween story. Much scarier, and more real. Like it or not, we are public figures and we are vulnerable. It only makes sense to take care.

[Annette Dashofy]

It seems like as soon as I remove my info from one of these lists, a new list crops up with it. And I can't figure out how to remove it from superpages.com either.

[Carol Novak]

If you do a Yahoo Search (or go to this page: http://dir.yahoo.com/Reference/Phone_Numbers_and_Addresses/Reverse_Lookup_Directories/) you will see a LONG list of reverse lookup sites. Each one has a way to REMOVE yourself. You just have to find it. It's time consuming to do this, but I thought it was worthwhile.

[-V-]

Thank you!!! I know how handy it is to have these sites when you lose an address book (like I did), but it is scary to know all of that info is out there and available. Thank you for posting this.
-V-

[Cassie]

Kathy, the Gmail "monitoring" of your emails is done by a computer algorithm -- no individual person is actually reading through your emails. That's how you end up getting some hilariously off-base ads. My friend Katie and I were making plans over Gmail to go to a Friday night wine tasting, and the ads that showed up along with my emails were "What type of Mom are you?" "Are you Johnny Depp?" "Furnished NYC Apartments" and "Free Menstrual Tracking."

[janetlynn13]

Start at the reverse phone lookup (superpages and whitepages are the same):

http://www.whitepages.com/10866/reverse_phone

enter your phone number, when your info comes up, select 'modify' in the grey bar above your name. DO NOT USE other modify options as they take you to another site.

Next page: Under your address, select 'update your listing.' DON'T SELECT ANY OTHER MODIFY OPTION.

Next page: DO NOT ENTER INFO HERE, but select then 'online removal form' option at the bottom of the page.

Next page: This is the form you need to fill out to be removed. The only info I added was 1) The reason for removal at the top, and 2) the code word you need to type in at the bottom.

I did this for myself awhile ago, and it worked because I no longer come up in a search.

Good luck!

[Josh]

Google Maps has not made it to my street yet, even though they have inexplicably made it to plenty of the subdivisions in the suburbs. We couldn't come close to our house, but we could see my son's girlfriend's house with her mother's minivan out front and two neighborhood kids (whom my son's girlfriend could identify, although I couldn't) standing in the neighbor's driveway.

William did a two-day post here about internet privacy, I think, a few months ago.

[PJ Parrish]

Good grief.

Thanks Elaine. We are deleted.

[Elaine Viets]

For the past three hours I've been trying to get on whitepages.com and keep getting this message:
"We are currently conducting maintenance. Service will be restored as soon as possible."

[Cheryl]

Thank you for the heads up. How disturbing. It seems like (try as I might) I can only opt out of a few sites. The quantity of information is beyond creepy. Phones have been in my husband's name from when I worked at Planned Parenthood. I have such a generic name, that for someone to find me is difficult, but my husband's name is so unique that there is no denying it is him. Yikes.

Years ago I worked for a man that did every possible transaction with cash, seeing how the information age has transformed everything, I think that he had the right idea.

[Mary Storyteller]

Still fighting the fraudulent Charter and AT&T accounts, but news from the FTC, I now have the right to ask for the information on those accounts and have it forwarded to the police. It's a new law, over-riding the crooks' "privacy rights" with my right to know what's being done in my name . . .or something.
BTW, the info on the left still says that you are on "tour by proxy," Elaine, but we know you are coming in person to B&N in Ladue on 11/10!!!

[Mary Storyteller]

oops, maybe we weren't supposed to let the stalkers know that . . .

[Elaine Viets]

You're right, Mary. I'll be at the Barnes & Noble Ladue 8871 Ladue Road on November 10 at 1 PM. Details are on my Website. Can't wait to come home.

[Cheryl]

Just finished Vampire Hours. So well done. It was really poignant. Looking forward to meeting you at the Ladue Barnes and Noble.