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    • In this series

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        • A comic, a musician and an actor walk into a bar…

        • How to: Lead a secret life

        • I am a... family guy / orgy enthusiast

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  • Blogs

    The TONY Blog

    • The Broadway Bomb: 200 skateboarders have a death wish on Saturday

    • Published on 10/10/08

    • At noon on Saturday, about 200 people will barrel down the entire length of Broadway on longboard skateboards for the annual "illegal" Broadway Bomb race. Why? Good question. We...

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    The Feed

    • NYC Wine & Food Festival: Ferran-tastic

    • Published on 10/12/08

    • Yesterday’s Times Talk with Anthony Bourdain and El Bulli’s Ferran Adria, the world’s most famous chef since Escoffier, was incredible if only for this reason: to see badass...

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  • Features

    Time Out New York / Issue 649 : Mar 5–11, 2008
    Secret lives

    Vanishing act

    Our reporter tries to make herself invisible to the Feds, the city and her Facebook friends—how hard can it be?

    By Allison Williams

    FACEBOOK/MYSPACE/LIVEJOURNAL  |  PEOPLE-SEARCH DATABASES  |  
    PHONE LISTINGS  |  GOOGLE RESULTS  |  BLOGS AND WEBSITES  |  THE IRS  |  EVERYONE ELSE


    Facebook/MySpace/LiveJournal
    Like clingy boyfriends, social-networking sites need a reason before they’ll let you break up with them. When deleting my Facebook page, I was offered dumpworthy excuses like, “This is temporary. I’ll be back,” or, “Facebook is resulting in social drama for me.” LiveJournal and Facebook both give you 30 days to change your mind before they close your page for good. Of course, the ability to resurrect a profile means it’s still saved somewhere; manually erasing each info field or blog entry before deleting the profile means there’s no turning back, but at least you don’t have to worry about evidence of your Depeche Mode fetish lingering in their servers. On MySpace, you just hit delete and they claim you and your profile are gone for good.

    Invisibility possible? My pages came down without a hitch, but between Google’s cached versions of journal entries and MySpace and Facebook photos posted by friends, it’s still possible to read about my Bobby Cuza crush and see pics of me dancing at a New Year’s party.




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    • 506 Anne Sun, Mar 09, at 07:53pm
      career background checks. And the reporter, editor, webmaster and their attorney all AGREE the article may very well can damage the young person's future, yet they refuse to remove the young person's name from the article because it will reveal the TRUTH :

      Flag as inappropriate


    • 508 Anne Sun, Mar 09, at 06:05pm
      Save yourself, your reputation and your future. Never, Never speak to newspaper reporters. Even if you spend a great deal of time and effort giving them the exact truth, they will twist and omit and take your words out of context - Just so they have "a story with content". And you or your child will suffer.

      Flag as inappropriate


    • 507 Anne Sun, Mar 09, at 06:01pm
      And that truth is, (maybe not all newspapers), but this one in particular, THE ST PETE TIMES does not want the public to know their articles are very often inaccurately written just for the sake of creating a SENSATIONAL story, with no regard for the truth or facts and with absolutely no concern for who's future they may permanently damage, including a minor's. And by the way, their attorney suggested we create a BLOG in order to correct this, so how ironic this story appeared. Save ...

      Flag as inappropriate


    • 505 Anne Sun, Mar 09, at 05:50pm
      What's really a serious problem is when a reporter and editor of a so-called reputable newspaper such as the St Pete Times ADMITS they did a very shallow and inaccurate article and a Google search of one of the people , A MINOR, mentioned in the article shows the article with all it's inaccuracies... and these inaccuracies are libelous to the minor's good name and reputation, and these inaccuracies have the potential to permanently damage the MINOR's college applications and future career ...

      Flag as inappropriate




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