Do any of your use Anybirthday.com? I used it all the time, but this last week, I keep getting 502 connection errors. Is anyone else having trouble with this site? If it ever comes back up, it is a great site to aid you in tracking down cousins. Iris

I couldn't load Anybirthday.com either, but a quick search on Google found the following comments below about that site as well as another called locateme.com. By the way, while I've never seen or used anybirthday.com, I have used another site which has been quite helpful even to non-members. It is: http://www.ussearch.com/ Here's the comment on anybirthday.com I found: --Ken http://www.breakthechain.org/exclusives/anybirthday.html SAMPLE CHAIN LETTER TEXT SUBJECT: ONLINE PUBLIC RECORDS I'm writing to you to tell you about a dangerous web site named WWW.ANYBIRTHDAY.COM , a web site that may have your personal information on it including your address and SS#! Apparently, thieves are taking this info for not so birthday "ish" uses. I did find my name and info, and you can delete the information by following this procedure. SERIOUSLY, THIS IS NOT A JOKE. Go to WWW.ANYBIRTHDAY.COM 1.) CLICK ON SEARCH. 2.)ENTER YOUR NAME, BUT NO ZIP CODE (SOMETIMES THEY ARE WRONG) 3.) CLICK FIND BIRTHDAY. IF YOU FIND YOUR NAME AND BIRTHDAY, WRITE IT DOWN EXACTLY LIKE THEY HAVE IT. 4.) CLICK ON FAQ. 5.) CLICK PRIVACY STATEMENT. 6.) CLICK OPT OUT OPTION. 7.) ENTER INFO. 8.) CLICK REMOVE. WAIT 10 - 15 MINUTES, AND GO BACK AND MAKE SURE YOUR NAME IS GONE. YOU SHOULD SHARE THIS WITH EVERYONE YOU KNOW AND CARE ABOUT. ALSO, SAVE THIS E-MAIL AND PERIODICALLY RE-CHECK THAT SITE AND MAKE SURE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION DOES NOT REAPPEAR. END CHAIN LETTER TEXT AnyBirthday.com is not a "dangerous web site." It is intended to be fun resource that will send you e-mail reminders of your friends' and relatives birthday. Their database of more than 135 million birth dates contains only names, zip codes and birth dates for identification purposes. They are affiliated with LocateMe.com who will, for a fee, provide the last known name and address of someone. Neither site provides social security numbers. From a statement on AnyBirthday.com: "Anybirthday.com never has and never will use or collect or distribute SSN information. Any message suggesting that we will for a fee or otherwise is simply false." The information provided by these sites comes from public records (i.e., information on file with government agencies such as health departments and motor vehicle bureaus). The instructions for removing your information from AnyBirthday.com are accurate, but you don't really gain anything from doing so, since this does not erase your information from the originating agency. There are no known cases of criminals using personal information obtained from AnyBirthday.com to perpetrate identity theft. Some versions of this warning say the advisory came from the IRS - this is also false. Admittedly, the findings on AnyBirthday.com and LocateMe.com could be used as a starting point for an identity thief or stalker, but any criminal willing to put forth the effort and cost to connect this info to data he or she can use would likely be able to find it from a variety of other sources. Break this Chain! -----Original Message----- From: IrisLillie@aol.com To: WIMARATH-L@rootsweb.com Sent: Sat, 2 Jul 2005 10:53:35 EDT Subject: [WIMARATH-L] Question about a web site Do any of your use Anybirthday.com? I used it all the time, but this last week, I keep getting 502 connection errors. Is anyone else having trouble with this site? If it ever comes back up, it is a great site to aid you in tracking down cousins. Iris

At 06:36 PM on 7/2/2005 this appeared on this list: >I couldn't load Anybirthday.com either, but a quick search on Google found the following comments below about that site as well as another called locateme.com. >By the way, while I've never seen or used anybirthday.com, I have used another site which has been quite helpful even to non-members. It is: http://www.ussearch.com/ A few comments for perspective: 1) It is not at all unusual for anybirthday.com to be unreachable for days at a time (as it has been for most of the past week). I don't know why. 2) locateme.com owns anybirthday.com. If you get a message from anybirthday.com saying, in effect, we can't give you what you want for free, but for a fee you might be able to get it from ..." you will most likely be directed to some other part of locateme.com 3) www.ussearch.com has also been unreachable for several days. 4) One reason I don't fear either of these services with regard to identity theft is that it is difficult to get large amounts of data from them at once. Personal privacy concerns are another matter. The information they publish about me is so widely available that having it in one more place does not seem like a big deal to me, but I am well aware that some others view this very differently. Personally I don't care who knows my street address, but I want there to be only limited access to my phone number. I have never seen any indication that any of the services mentioned above will "cough up" your SSN, even for a fee. Rollie