7 thoughts on “Quick Request”

1. Done, thanks.

2. There will be two of us definitely going to TO on Sat for the meeting.

3. Thanks for letting us know Kathy. Look forward to meeting you!

4. @Trishia,

   I’m new to Meetup and not sure what privacy they maintain. Do they make email addresses public? It seems fairly open, and if they publish email addresses I will want to use my real name, not a pseudonym.

   I’m not sure I’m ready to “come out” completely yet. I’m still concerned about Big Uncle watching. That may sound silly coming from a 70+-year-old Canadian (for over 30 years, resident here for over 40) who was just minding my own business until a couple of years ago when Uncle’s overreach became public knowledge. But Uncle has provided no assurance that he will leave us expats in peace and treat us well as visitors, and it seems doubtful that he ever will guarantee fair treatment. I would like to visit the US for family reasons at least once more, but as things stand it will be traumatic to go, especially wondering how much Uncle knows about me and how vindictive the border officials may decide to be. The mutual suspicion that has grown between Uncle and his former citizens is so sad.

   Trishia, I will appreciate your advice on how to participate in the Meetup group.

5. @AnonAnon
   I don’t find your concerns “silly” at all. With all the hacking, NSA, etc, who knows what information goes where.
   I was an Organizer at another MeetupGroup for 3 years, which did overlap with my OMG moment/state. I have had no issues with any breach of privacy nor crossing the border since renouncing. Even with that US birthplace on my CDN passport. I wasn’t even asked for my CLN.
   That said, what I understand is that any information that you post, is visible to the public. Their policy and privacy pages spell out what they do/do not do with the information. I’ve tried to copy/paste what I think addresses your concerns.
   Yes, Uncle is a dreadful relative. I still am bamboozled by the fact that the US could ever have “suspected” me of doing anything and that I had to leave to escape them.
   Hope this is helpful. Please let me know if you need anything more.

   http://www.meetup.com/terms/
   4. Your Information
   4.1 Definition. “Your Information” is defined as any information post or other material you provide (directly or indirectly), including through the registration process for a Group or a Meetup Everywhere, or through the use of our Platform, in any public message board (including the personal introduction section of each topic group, or paid services of the Meetup website) or through email. You are solely responsible for Your Information, and we act as a passive conduit for your online distribution and publication of your Public Information (as defined below).

   Any of Your Information that, through the use of our Platform or otherwise, you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of our website is referred to as “Public Information” (your name (if provided) and location are considered Public Information); any other portion of Your Information shall be referred to as “Private Information.” “Publicly accessible” areas of our website are those areas that are available either to some or all of our members (i.e., not restricted to your viewing only) or to the general public.

   You should understand that your Public Information may be accessible by and made public through syndication programs (including data feed tools) and by search engines, metasearch tools, crawlers, metacrawlers and other similar programs.

   7.2 Communications with Members of the Meetup Community.
   Meetup Group Mailing List and Meetup Everywhere Emails. You may receive email from other members of your Meetup Group via your Meetup Group’s mailing list. You may subscribe, unsubscribe, and manage the frequency of emails you receive from your Meetup’s mailing list in the Communication Preferences tab of the Your Account page or, for Meetup Everywhere, directly from the email itself. You may also send an email to, or reply to an email from, other members of your Meetup Group or Meetup Everywhere. Bear in mind that when you send an email to your Meetup Groups’s mailing list, your email address will be disclosed to other members of your Meetup who have also subscribed to the mailing list. When you contact the Creator of a Meetup Everywhere or become the Host of a Meetup Everywhere meetup, your email address is disclosed to the Creator of that Meetup Everywhere.
   Private email. You may choose to limit which category of Meetup.com members may send you private email through our Platform in the Communication Preferences tab of the Your Account page.

6. @Trishia, thanks for the Meetup info. I will think about joining your group under my real name. I suppose that if Big Uncle really is interested in tracking an old relative like me (what a waste of his resources that would be!), he is probably able to do it via my comments on IBS anyway. 🙁

7. @anonanon

   If they want to they already know who you are and where you live (and the rest of us as well). Hopefully they don’t care about us enough to want to follow it up. 🙁