My *Dead* Space?
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This just strikes me a little odd… there’s an AP story about a site that is archiving the MySpace pages of people who’ve died.
I suppose that on the surface it’s innocent enough… until you see stories of mistaken identity… where an innocent living person’s page gets labeled as that of a dead person who’s done something vile. One example from the article:
There was the case of Christine Hutchinson, a woman from Pittsburgh who was accused of hiding her miscarried fetus in her freezer. She happened to bear the same name as a high school student from Philadelphia - and the latter’s MySpace profile was mistakenly attached to the creepy news story on MyDeathSpace.
Ugly names began filling her inbox: Baby killer, they called her. Murderer. Then death threats.
“They were telling me they hope I die and get stuffed in a freezer, rot in jail, stuff like that,” says the misidentified Hutchinson.
Patterson removed her profile when he was notified of the case of mistaken identity hours later.
But the damage was done. Hutchinson’s face was already out there. She has no plans to sue Patterson, but says she rarely leaves her house alone now, afraid of being attacked.
In one sense this kind of thing can have a morbid fascination to it, but there needs to be a LOT more care taken to avoid mistaken identities.
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I just can’t believe it! This is something that makes people now realize how dangerous a place this can be for the average person.
I don’t blame people, for this reason alone, not to be on-line in the first place. I hope that this poor person can get her life back again!
I’d say that just “not being on-line in the first place” isn’t really necessary, however being careful about what details about yourself you publish. Bearing in mind that once published, somebody somewhere probably has a copy of it.