Haven't updated this blog recently due to lack of good news to report to force loser website Blockshopper.com to allow people to opt out of having their home address available for anyone with smart phone to see.
I'll start with the good news first. There's a bill in California legislature, SB-242 that would require social networking sites to allow users to establish privacy settings upon joining, not afterward. I don't know any more detail about it, but my source is story in Novato Patch by Spiros Stratigos, http://novato.patch.com/blog_posts/how-easily-can-someone-access-your-name-address-and-home-buying-history.
The bad news is that Blockshopper continues the vile practice of publishing "stories" about anyone who participates in a real estate transaction by taking data from buyers' and sellers' Linked In and Facebook pages. There have been documented cases of the information taken being inaccurate. (Go to links in first post for examples.)
I had heard condo we lived in previously here in Northern California was for sale. My wife did a search by the address and found one of these stories, which mentioned that the seller was a VP in a PR firm and that the selling price was 33% less than the sellers paid for it. The information about the seller matched that on his Linked In profile. I'm pretty sure that the current owner didn't request Blockshopper to tell the whole world he was about to take at least a 33% loss on his property. On the page was a link to another couple in the condo complex, former neighbors, who had the same type of data posted from their Linked In profiles, again mentioning the actual price they sold the condo, as well as what they paid. I'm not posting links to the stories, to protect privacy of the people, and to not give an additional click of web-site traffic to the Blockshopper web-site.
County recorders in California aren't allowed to publish home ownership data on the web, obviously to keep data from being easily accessible from the small fraction of nut jobs and criminals that unfortunately plague any community. Blockshopper should be held to same standard. At a bare minimum, Blockshopper should be required to respect the wishes of those who want to opt out of Blockshopper's reckless disregard of people's safety and privacy. If you agree, I continue to encourage you to lobby you government officials to pass legislation supporting above.
© 2011, by blogspot.com user StopBlockshopper, may not publish or reprint without permission
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