Technology throughout the years has brought many wonderful advances to society. Trains, cars, factories, the radio, television and the Internet have all added many things to our lives that we now take for granted. It would be hard to imagine the world without any of these advances.

Each of these advances though has brought some resistance, disadvantages and the potential for abuse. There are train wrecks, car accidents, kids that watch television for 10 hours a day and invasions of privacy on the Internet. One of the most recent public outcries has been over the ability to find out personal information based only on a person’s phone number. If you know a particular phone number you can go to any number of reverse phone search sites, enter the number and within seconds have the owner’s name and address. Not only can you do this for land line numbers, but you can also trace a cell phone number.

Advocates of this service say that the information is easily available in other ways and that finding information about a person offline is not difficult either. However, it is obvious that there is a limit to what information should be publicly available on the Internet.

Just think about it. If you dial a wrong number on your phone, realize it and hang up before anyone answers, the recipient of the call can trace your cell phone number through an online site and know way too much about you in a matter of seconds. That seems like a complete invasion of your privacy. You made an innocent mistake while dialing, but now some complete stranger knows you mobile number, name and probably address. It does not seem logical to allow all of our personal information to be available for anyone to access at anytime from pretty much anywhere.

There are supposedly ways to opt out of having you information available for a cell phone trace of land line trace, but it is unlikely that you will be able to keep your information out of all the public websites. A word of advice, guard your personal information and don’t just allow it to be used and gathered by anyone.