PeopleFinder Privacy

From Katrina Help Info

Privacy Statement

PeopleFinder is collecting data about missing persons and survivors of Katrina from various sites that were set up to collect informal posts by concerned relatives and friends. Those sites are inherently unstructured; our project will place the data into a structured format that is easier to search and use effectively to identify people and connections. The goal is to update statuses of those who are missing and hopefully reconnect them with their families and friends.

That is our first priority. It means that we will be gathering a lot of personal data and making it accessible via search, and this has raised privacy concerns. A couple of important points about privacy:

• This project is led by web professionals who understand the privacy issues and are attempting to address them as well as possible, but failing to provide public access to the data we've gathered would be detrimental to the goals of the project.

• The data in our database will be stored on a secure server at Salesforce.com, and will be less vulnerable to persons who might be data-mining for other purposes (e.g. spammers) than it was at the sites where we found it.