Online Telephone Directories Inaccurate.

[MineralMan]

Like many others, I sometimes use online telephone directories, like whitepages.com to locate people. It often works very well, but not everything in these directories is to be trusted. As examples, I give you these names to look up. The results are interesting:

Hugh Jorgan
Heywood Jablome

There are even 58 Jesus Christs living all over the United States.

Those old joke names appear in many entries and with many spellings. All of this raised the question about where these sites get their information. I think I'm going to have to do more double-checking from now on.

[NBachers]

1. Online Yellow Pages vs Actual Real Physical Yellow Pages

Man, it's nothing but frustration trying to find something in the alleged "Online Yellow Pages." Give me the real paper Yellow Pages any time. Still one of my best resources. It's too bad they're getting so minimal and depleted these days. I have a several-years-old copy at work to consult.

[Tesha]

2. Are you familiar with the concept of "planted errors"?

Mapmakers often introduce subtle-but-harmless
errors so that if try to steal their intellectual
property, you'll also steal the errors that give
you away.

I'd imagine online white pages do the same thing.

Tesha

[MineralMan]

3. Uh...somehow I don't think that's it.

Like mapmakers, they'd be a bit more subtle about it, I think.