Onibasu -- All our emails can be viewed by anyone & searched for on Google - VERY IMPORTANT TO UNDERSTAND

[Guest guest]

Hey Jen,

I agree entirely with your suggestion that we should expect that our emails

will once in a while be forwarded inappropriately and without our consent to

others who are not on the list.

But let me make clear to you what is so entirely appalling to me here,

because I think it really does impact all of us. When you join this list, as

when you join any other list that requires membership approval

and is publicly listed in the directory -- you expect two

things at least from the amount of privacy that you get:

1) only list members can access the archives; other people

cannot; and

2) the emails that are posted are not accessible for everyone and anyone

crawling the web or using a web search engine like Google or AltaVista to

view; you cannot search the archives with Google or other

internet search engines because archival access requires a log-in.

What Onibasu actually does - and this is an extremely important point -- is

to copy the entire content of the archives onto their

website, thus making all the emails that everyone thought were accessible to

list members only available on the web for EVERYONE and ANYONE to see. This

means that every email that has been sent to the list from

January 2000 to the present is posted on the web. If you look today at the

last emails that they have posted on their website, they are

now three days behind in this copying project -

http://onibasu.com/archives/am/date_index_1.html . Indeed, they actually do

say that they do this - they say in their FAQ that " the Onibasu archives "

are updated a few times a week ( http://onibasu.com/faq.html#update ) , and

that messages from the website are archived in Onibasu -

There is a reason why you can't Google the email archives -

because protects all list members from non-members being able

to do that. So although the Onibasu homepage says that they are a search

engine, this is in fact not true. Their " service " is to copy all of our

emails into their archives and then give us a decent search engine for it.

This is exactly what you would be able to do with Google if weren't

safeguarding our emails from public view. Because someone has given Onibasu

permission to copy all of our emails into their archives - and this means

onto their public site - Google can now search all of our emails on that

site. There is no membership, no log-=in required for Onibasu.

Think about how I stumbled upon this fact, because it is quite revealing as

to the implications of Onibasu's project. I was searching in Google for the

quoted terms " small thalami " - my daughter happens to have them -- and when

the search results came up, there was my own email describing my daughter

and her hair test results and everything else. But there's more - my

Microsoft Outlook program uses my name Theresa Lynn Truax (now Theresa

Truax-Gischler) to identify me whenever I send an email from my computer.

This means that anyone who types " Theresa Lynn Truax " in any search engine

on the web can access my personal emails to the list on the

Onibasu site. The same thing will happen if type in " tltbaku " which is the

prefix to my Email address.

So. what we all thought was at least a slightly private - but you're right,

never entirely so because this is after all email - forum now appears to

actually be physically copied onto Onibasu's hard disk somewhere and then

posted for all the world to see. All the emails about our children are

posted not only on the list, but also on an entirely external

website.

I'm sorry, but I didn't sign up for that fact that my emails are being

copied onto an external website. Nowhere on the site does it

tell me that this is going to be the case if I post an email to the list. No

one informed me and no one asked for my permission to do this. Perhaps the

list owners did not know that this was going on, but they are responsible

nonetheless.

I'm sorry, but I just feel that what little privacy does offer

myself and my family has been greatly violated by whomever consented for

Onibasu to copy all the archives onto their site - if anyone.

Sorry for rocking the boat and being a pain, but in my opinion, this is a

boat that has got to be rocked.

Absolute best,

Theresa

Onibasu.com,

>

>

>

> I am absolutely appalled to find that you have posted on your website my

> email posts to the list about my young daughter's

> neurological problems without asking for my permission. This is simply

> inexcusable and is a clear violation of my young daughter's right to

> privacy. How dare you post on your site intimate details about a young

girl

> of 2 years without first gaining consent? Shame on you!

>

>

>

> Remove IMMEDIATELY from your website all references to my emails, my

name

> and my email address. The following seven pages must be removed from

your

> site:

>

> http://onibasu.com/archives/am/131110.html

>

> http://onibasu.com/archives/am/131114.html

>

> http://onibasu.com/archives/am/131140.html

>

> http://onibasu.com/archives/am/131186.html

>

> http://onibasu.com/archives/am/131404.html

>

> http://onibasu.com/archives/am/131407.html

>

> http://onibasu.com/archives/am/131450.html

>

>

>

> I note that you have posted the entire list archives on

your

> website - http://onibasu.com/archives/am/date_index_80.html . This is

> tantamount to internet highway robbery and you are very much in the

wrong in

> violating the privacy of all the individuals on that list. I can only

assume

> that you have posted the group list archives on your

website

> without permission. I am notifying immediately the list

owner

> and all list members of this fact. You say on your homepage -

> http://onibasu.com/ - that you are an " archives search interface, " but

you

> are not. You have clearly copied all the archives of onto

> your site, along with the archives of a number of other -

> http://onibasu.com/date_indices.html .

>

>

>

> In absolute outrage,

>

> Theresa Lynn Truax

>