Two things to share.
Thing 1: American Red Cross "Safe & Well" Web site
- The ARC "Safe & Well" Web site allows people in, or from, disaster areas to post their status on line and make it available to selected people.
The "Safe & Well" home page is at
https://safeandwell.communityos.org/
Using the page takes some pre-planning and sharing of information before the event.
Searches are by name and address (street, city, state, zip) or name and telephone number (the person who is "safe and well" may register as many as three 20-digit numbers, a match on one is sufficient).
The information is straight forward both for the person who survived an event and for people searching for the person. The add-a-name form includes a dropdown menu with a list of current disasters, but is made flexible by offering an "Other" option.
The site is well supported by HELP (how to) and FAQ pages.
The only pre-event activity is to make sure the people who you want to find you (or the people you want to find) have the critical search information: first and last name, as many as three (3) telephone numbers, and a complete address. The more information the more accurate the search.
Thing 2: Closing out social networking accounts
- AccountKiller,
http://www.accountkiller.com/en/
is a Web site that lists ways to kill/delete accounts on a number of programs, including 4shared, 9lives, Aardvark, About Me, About.com, Adobe, Adsense, AdultFriendFinder, AIM, Alexa, Amazon, Amigos.com, Amplify, Ancestry.com, Answerbag, Answers.com, AOL, Apartment Therapy, Auran, Backupify, Badoo, Bart Smit, Battle.net, Bearshare, Beautiful People, Bebo, Beliefnet, Bigpoint, Bitly, BlackPlanet, Blekko, Blip.tv, Blockbuster, Blogcatalog, Blogger, Blogshot, Bol.com, Buitenlandse Partner, BuxJunction, CGHub, CNET, Facebook, Gmail, Google, Gravatar, Habbo, Hotmail / Live, ICQ, Microsoft Live, MSN / Messenger, Myspace, OurWorld, RuneScape, Skype, Tagged, Twitter, Windows Live, Wordpress, World of Warcraft, Yahoo, Zoosk
Deleting personal information from some sites is relatively simple; from other sites less so.
Bonus thing: Separate personal and work email.
- Work email is not private; the employer retains the right to read both outgoing and incoming emails.
If you ever intend to use email for something personal, get a personal account.
There are a number of free accounts available, some of which allow you to "POP" the correspondence down to an email consolidator such as Outlook.
If you want to express yourself on groups and blogs - such as LinkedIn - you are well advised to set up an account with a fictitious name and employer. That may limit your "connected to"s, but you cannot be associated with - and possibly fired from - your employer for expressing your opinions. Some organizations have a serious lack of humor when it comes to unflattering information being posted for all the world to read. (Imagine that.)
