I object! -Danger on GPS

[AK7AN]

With all the technology today that can be used to track your location or just find your physical address.. ie, your cell phone, bank or credit card usage, apps in your new car's electronics, facebook, twitter, .... I could go on and on. APRS is the least of anyone's worries about finding your location. When you go to a website, no matter what it is, and register to use whatever service that site provides you click the "I agree" on the terms and conditions with out reading the fine print, you are turning over all you info to the website owner to do with whatever they wish. Most sell it for marketing purposes. If you use the internet in this day and age and think you have any semblance of privacy you seriously need help.. It's just a sad commentary on todays society that you can't trust that your info is not being used for netharious purposes. Not sure how one could live disconnected in todays world. Just my .02.
73
Ed
AK7AN

[KM6HK]

As for the (GPS) link it's mislabeled should be (ARPS) because it takes you, in my case, to ARPS.FI/WA8YXM and then you got to guess which Icon is where I am.. Good luck with that (Blue Handset works best).

Yes, as I drill down through this whole issue, the one point that we are finding that most agreement on is the connection to APRS.FI -There is good agreement from all sides (there has been a lot of PMs and other private emails going back and forth about this..), and clearly no one is comfortable with the way APRS.FI is handling the situation. APRS.Fi has multiple issues that are aggravating the situation 1.) They can not be contacted at all 2.) They refuse to remove data, even data that is years old never scrolls off their database. 3.) They have no mechanism that allows a simple and painless and direct way for the owner of the data to request its removal (this point puts them in violation on many countries laws).

Yes, I agree with you about the "GPS" hyperlink and have suggested to Andy that he switch that link to the APRS.DIRECT system. FYI: APRS.DIRECT seems to be very responsibly run, it will within 24hrs respond to a request to remove data, and it has an organized and smooth system already in place to effect data removal. They do it all the time. I am not just some lone wing-nut that wants his data removed, thousands of hams have used the APRS.DIERCT removal system. I have emailed with them, and they have responded and removed promptly and in detail, excellent 'customer service'..

-As for APRS.FI that seems to be a black-box, or maybe better called a 'black-hole', if you get near its event horizon then your data is sucked in, never for you have control of it again, but it leaks out of the other side of the black hole to Google Adwords. I don;t know if you follow astro-physics, but there is a theory that each black hole has a corresponding white-hole that spews out "objects', in this case the analogy is that it is spitting our US$, Euros, whatever, and they are raining down on APRS.FI