At 04:46 AM 11/14/98 -0500, Jason Burton wrote:
Does anyone know what I should do if someone was posting sensitive information on a website? And what if the webmaster of the domain doesnt respond to the request for removal of information. IS there something that say's what is and isn't able to be published "personal information" on the internet. If someone can reply I'd appreciate it. Seeking council.
They don't call this The Net Of A Million Lies for nothing :-) Depends substantially on what kind of information it is, what jurisdictions you, the web site, and the poster are in, and whether you're interested in seeking legal counsel as well as just hacker advice. IANAL, but there are a range of torts from libel or slander to invasion of privacy to emotional distress that sometimes apply, if you're into that sort of approach; if the person the information is about is a public figure, this seldom works, and if the information is true, you've also got a much more limited case. Alternatively, there's the Big Gun Flame War approach of making sure everyone knows what an unresponsive loser the web site providers are, though that does lose the opportunity to quietly get the information to go away, even if it hasn't already been sucked down by Altavista, Yahoo, Hotbot, and DejaNews. Most web sites are either on big commercial hosting sites with relatively responsive abuse@wherever contacts, or else they're smaller sites which get connectivity and/or hosting service from larger providers. So find out who their upstream providers are, and talk with them about their customer. Thanks! Bill Bill Stewart, bill.stewart@pobox.com PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE 4639