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FAQ
What is Google Person Finder? Google Person Finder is a web application that allows individuals to post and search for the status of relatives or friends affected by a disaster. The program has an API based on the PFIF open standard which lets press agencies, non-governmental agencies and others to contribute to the database and receive updates. In addition, websites can choose to embed Google Person Finder as a gadget on their own pages. Google Person Finder is open source software running on the Google App Engine platform, and it has been launched in multiple languages. When and why did Google build Google Person Finder? Google engineers built Google Person Finder in response to the January 2010 Haiti earthquake in order to help those affected by the earthquake connect with their loved ones. In 2005, during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, multiple websites created missing person registries, so families and aid workers had to search in multiple places when looking for information. Google Person Finder addresses this problem by accepting data from other registries in a common format and searching over all the data. The common format is called PFIF, and it was established by volunteers of the Katrina People Finder Project. Is Google Person Finder a project of Google.org? Yes. Google Person Finder is a project of the Google Crisis Response division of Google.org. How does Google.org decide whether or not to launch Google Person Finder in response to a disaster? Google Person Finder is one of the tools that the Google Crisis Response team uses. The Google Crisis Response team analyzes the scale of impact of the disaster and then determines which of its tools would be most useful for responding to the given situation. Who has access to the Google Person Finder data? All data entered into Google Person Finder is available to the public and viewable and usable by anyone. Google does not review or verify the accuracy of the data. The standard Google Terms of Service apply to all users of Google Person Finder. How does Google keep Google Person Finder records up to date? Google Person Finder depends on individual users to update and remove records when no longer relevant. Google is not responsible for updating the data. What happens to the data when the crisis has subsided? We want to balance the usefulness of being able to search for a friend or relative with the privacy concerns of making missing person records available on the Internet. So, we intend for each instance of Google Person Finder to be up for a limited time. After the immediate crisis has passed and more usual forms of communication are available the data in person finder is deleted. Initially a record will only have fixed duration before it will be deleted - this duration is chosen by the initial author of the record but can not be more than a year. Once the incident is over the repository will be deactivated and all data will become inaccessible. How can I help improve Google Person Finder? Google Person Finder is an open source project, hosted on Google Code at http://code.google.com/p/googlepersonfinder/. We invite you to contribute and participate in improving the product for future crisis events. If you have more questions about Google Person Finder or would like to suggest improvements, please join our discussion group at http://groups.google.com/group/personfinder. |
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Why not use the Safe And Well website of the Red Cross? https://safeandwell.communityos.org/cms/index.php
This is inaccurate. For something this devastating and serious you cannot give out false information. My family searched for my auntie that lives in japan on here, and it came up with she is dead. To really think that she was gone was upsetting. Which moments later we got contact with her and found out she was alive and well, to think moments before we all thought she was dead is sickening and this is your fault providing false info. This is terrible you should be ashamed of yourselfs and THIS NEEDS TO BE TAKEN DOWN
My deepest sympathies for what has happened to people in Japan. I am horrified with it and have great admiration for how people in Japan are handling it. It will take months to clean the debris. With so many people homeless, I would like to provide shelter for mother and children in my home , remove kids from the horror of aftermath, if possible, while Japanese government and men work on cleaning the country and rebuilding it. I am sure there are many people who would like to do the same world wide. How can we involve airlines world wide to fly people, who want, for free ?
Trying to seach as many names of my old friends I can remember as possible, I found the system not sufficiently customized for our Japanese language. Will the developpers be kind enough to consider the following issues?
Safe and Well is the opposite of this. Safe and Well let's you note you're okay, you can't do that if you're missing.
Safe and Well is US only - its done by the American Red Cross, the ICRC has their own system for missing persons, but its not self-serve.