Shocking! It worked!

My landlord in my new apartment asked me awhile back if I would help him find where his son lives in America. *laugh*

The story confuses me, but basically he knew that he was in New Jersey but only had his phone number. "Why didn't he just call to ask?", you inquire? I'm not sure. It's expensive to call, but also my landlord is a bit odd.

So, he asked me if I could search on the Internet and find the city. I told him I'd try, but I was doubtful that I'd find anything.

Much to my surprise, White Pages served up the information I wanted in seconds. (Answer: Spotswood, NJ) I don't have many home phone numbers memorized to check, but I also plugged in 3 others and it brought up the correct names. One address was old, but that's still pretty good.

I am a little disturbed, however, by the "find neighbors" button on the site. For my childhood home at the lake, clicking this brought up 3 pages with a total of 23 people. That's 23 people, with their name, phone, and address.

The site seems to be trying to prevent misuse by requring a last name in the initial search, but it would be so easy to get around that. I'm no stalker, but all you'd need to do is find one mailbox in a neighborhood with the name on it...and then you can get everything about everyone!

Does this bother anyone else?

Of course, you can always make your number unlisted, but I wonder how long it would take for that change to make it through all the databases around.