People often ask me where I get my story ideas from. The answer, often, from YOU, 7onlince.com visitors and ABC-7 viewers.

This is just such an example. After my story last week about Yahoo's new search engine, several of you asked about a message doing the e-mail rounds. It talks about the Google Phonebook feature and what some people call its "dangers."

If you go to Google.com and type in your home phone number (and it's publicly listed), you get an instant response with your address and a link to a map of your home. You can also get driving directions to your house. The first time you do this, it can be quite shocking. Yes, you knew your home number was in the phonebook, but you didn't expect people could get a map and an address so easily.

Turns out this sort of information has always been part of the public record, but was not easy to find. It's just that the Internet now connects it all easily - much too easily for some.

The folks at Google offer an easy solution. Go to this particular page of their site and you can have them remove your number, map and address from the database. That will buy you peace of mind, but will not take care of the entire problem, since several other sites do the same thing. But at least it's a start. When you visit those other sites - Anywho.com and Phonenumber.com are just two examples - you will see it's not so easy to take yourself off those listings.

If you have a small business or run a corporation, you probably want to keep your records there, as it can help, in theory to generate business.

Resources:

Write to techguru@sree.net and let me know your thoughts.

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