For those of you who are worried about confidentiality in respect to the Mortgage Shortfall E-Petition, please read the following extract from the e-petition website ' www.petition-them.com '...... If you are a person signing a petition, we require that you supply your name and e-mail address (Not postal address). Your e-mail address is something unique to you, like a signature, that validates your agreement with the petition in question. However, we will only post your name on the site -so as to offer you a degree of confidentiality. We would not wish you to become the subject of 'spam mail' or other forms of unsolicited advertising. We will retain your e-mail address, privately for validation purposes and may contact you to check the address is authentic. In the near future it is likely that all e-mail addresses will be checked automatically to ensure authenticity. Even I can't access the info. Please keep the signatures rolling in, we are now over a 150, next stop 1,000. Many thanks, Mark.

-- M Amos (idgroms@hotmail.com), September 23, 2003

Answers

As has been observed on numerous occasions, e-petitions are a complete waste of time. There is nothing to stop people setting up tens, if not hundreds of eMail addresses and using these to sign the petition. In any event, nobody will take a blind bit of notice as there is no way of verifying all these "signatures" are legitimate and from real people.

If you really want to do something constructive then set up a proper petition with signatures and names/addresses, go and see your MP and let them know what you disagree with and why or write to the newspapers.

-- Chris (notgoingtotell@yahoo.com), September 23, 2003.

I don't agree I think that every little bit helps. Small steps can make big changes, sign the petition and, if your MP can and will support you also then fantastic but don't ignore one in favour of the other - do both!

-- Chris (chris@anon.co.uk), September 24, 2003.

To Chris (notgoingtotell),

You obviously didn't read my reply of the 17th May 2003. I'll repeat it for you below:

"In reply to the above. Obviously, you can never guarantee authenticity - even on a written petition. What the online petition does do is provide an indication of the strength of support. This is why the Consumer Association has also started their own e-petition in respect to the endowment problem. It also helps bring more publicity to the issue, in the case of the Mortgage Shortfall e-petition for example, BBC news are interested in the outcome. In respect to contacting ones MP many people who have been following this site will know I, as indeed many others, have advocated doing this. You can also see the letters between myself and Ruth Kelly the Treasury Minister on repo problems."

I have also contacted the newspapers on numerous occasions. I fully concur with Chris's (chris@anon) more balanced approach.

Mark.

-- M Amos (idgroms@hotmail.com), September 24, 2003.