Music Marketing Network for Musicians and Music Business Professionals
Identity Protection
Hey, I'm just here to vent. I just saw a video on youtube.com about a couple stupid Taylor Swift fans going up to her property. The whole video was only about 16 seconds long, but the comments after the video were predominantly "OMG can you give me Taylor's address!?!?" and it made me think:
How did THESE girls find her address? With the popularity with the internet, stalkers (or rabid fans in this case) and find this information SO easily since cell phone companies, the Yellow Pages and Google make it that way. So how do fans get a hold of celebrity's addresses?
Type "[Name of Celebrity]'s street address" and within (no joke) TWO MINUTES I had not only Taylor's street address... but her private cell phone (thanks AT&T) and email address. So why do people pay extra to get their names out of the Yellow Pages? To keep people from finding them, right? But why since you can find them JUST as easily with or without that protection. Seriously… TWO MINUTES I found this information. That’s not a joke.
So I ask you people (since you’re all smarter than I am) is there ANY way to keep anything private and sacred anymore? Cell phone companies don’t care, granted I knew Taylor had an iPhone so it was easy to find her number on that carrier (again, thanks AT&T for sucking). I really want to know what there are so we as musicians can do to keep what little privacy we have. Anyone here know that answer? Google says you don’t.
How did THESE girls find her address? With the popularity with the internet, stalkers (or rabid fans in this case) and find this information SO easily since cell phone companies, the Yellow Pages and Google make it that way. So how do fans get a hold of celebrity's addresses?
Type "[Name of Celebrity]'s street address" and within (no joke) TWO MINUTES I had not only Taylor's street address... but her private cell phone (thanks AT&T) and email address. So why do people pay extra to get their names out of the Yellow Pages? To keep people from finding them, right? But why since you can find them JUST as easily with or without that protection. Seriously… TWO MINUTES I found this information. That’s not a joke.
So I ask you people (since you’re all smarter than I am) is there ANY way to keep anything private and sacred anymore? Cell phone companies don’t care, granted I knew Taylor had an iPhone so it was easy to find her number on that carrier (again, thanks AT&T for sucking). I really want to know what there are so we as musicians can do to keep what little privacy we have. Anyone here know that answer? Google says you don’t.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by David Hooper on -
What address did you get? I just did the same search and found her fan club address, which is:
Taylor Swift
c/o Taylor Swift Entertainment
242 West Main Street
PMB 412
Hendersonville, TN 37075
Take a look at http://www.fanmail.biz/98995.html for what happens when you write to it. Pretty interesting.
On a related note... I recommend http://lifelock.com/ for anybody who does online purchases. Or you can do the services they provide on your own, which is mostly writing letters to credit bureaus and telling them to put your account on "alert" status. Either way, it's a good idea, I think. An extra layer of protection for a growing problem, which will give you one less thing to worry about.
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Permalink Reply by Ron "RC" Carr on -
I didn't get that address. What I did was this:
Saw the YouTube video that sparked my interest in this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URqfIjEhdO4)
Did a Google search on Taylor's address (took me 2 minutes; I will not post it here)
Used Google Earth to find the address and it matched the surroundings seen in that YouTube video (even though it was shaky). Sounds stupid, but it worked. Another reason that I believe that it is her real address is that my search came up with a residence and not a business like her fanmail would have.
It's like the guy who got fed up with the Verison CEO (if you remember that YouTube video) and it took him only a few minutes to get his information. Everything is out there and her address was on the first page of my Google search.
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Permalink Reply by Paula Benson on -
Do any one know where I can get one of those small battery operated fans? They were popular a few years ago.
Paula
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Permalink Reply by Ron "RC" Carr on
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Sorry, but your on the wrong discussion. Another discussion would be better.
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Permalink Reply by Doc Oakroot on -
My address was on my website until someone grabbed the address, printed some checks, and started buying stuff with bad checks around NYC. Fortunately, he didn't have any real info (like SSN or real bank numbers), so it was only moderately difficult to unravel it (and I got a pretty good song out of it, lol).
But a perfect crime... my local police (in Durham, NC at the time) said I had to report it to the NY or NJ police (the crook wrote checks in both states) and the NY/NJ police insisted that only my local police could deal with it... the crook was long gone and stealing someone else's identity before any law enforcement would even recognize that a crime had been committed.
Anyway, now I have mail box at one of those businesses that provides a mail box, but with an address that looks like a physical office. And since it's not the post office, they won't give out my real address - at least not to some random, non-official inquiry.
I also try not to associate my legal name with my stage name online. But I suspect it wouldn't be hard to find that connection anyway. (Especially since I always credit my songwriting to my legal name).
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