A company called “SOMAPS” is using the sex offender registry as a marketing list to sell their app.
The app is described as “the app that was created by a sex offender for sex offenders” and supposedly warns registrants when they come in proximity of a “danger zone”.
What’s offensive is the company behind the app used the sex offender registry as their mailing list to market their app. What’s horrifyingly offensive is the mail piece is a full color postcard with the words “SEX OFFENDER” in red at the top. This way, you can be shamed by whoever distributes your mail and your neighbors!
If you’ve not received one in the mail, you can likely expect to get one.
Aside from the offensive nature of the app as well as the harmful method the owner is choosing to market it, is the ridiculousness of an app that would allow your movement to be geo-tracked and times when you accidentally or unknowingly stray inside an exclusion zone potentially recorded. It’s like volunteering for GPS monitoring!
The owners of the company are not disclosed on their website, the domain name is hidden by “domains by proxy” but the app is registered to a “Mark Hall” and there is a business named “Somaps, LLC” registered in Cocoa, FL that is owned by a Mark Hall, who is also registered as a sex offender in Cocoa, Florida.
I see in my Informed Delivery that I am getting a postcard in the mail today… is it legal for people to use the registry to market their products/ services?
Oh, and I just got one of these postcards today. Not happy. Would be happy to post a pic of it. As a group, RSOs could collectively file a class action and a cease and desist on this guy. I’d be happy to join that one, too.
Very few people contribute to our current lawsuits – that’s why we have such a hard time getting them off the ground. If more people pitched in we’d be able to get more suits going.
money coming today
You only need something like this if you’re excluded from those zones.
My advice: Get a local map from your closest GIS office with locally recognized buffer zones around schools, parks, and day cares. Private day cares that pop up in your neighborhood don’t count.
What if you are “grandfathered” into this residency restriction (convicted pre-2004) and you have exclusions to these zones.
Miami-Dade is a good example. If you are living in one of these zones, legally, and you have this app, it would be going off constantly. Telling you that you are in a “no-go zone”.
I moved into my house in 1999, when their were no residency restrictions. There is a park not 250 feet from my house. Broward Sheriffs Office told me I am good to go. I have no restrictions on this park (except the kids playground 1/2 mile away). Which I can barely make it to the park itself, never mind a walk more than 2500 feet (one way); I have Stage 4 (end stage COPD with a 25% lung capacity) .
I walk my 2 dogs into the edge of the park, they do their “business”, sniff some trees and I leave…. For the past 17 years.
I have met cops while IN the park, with my dogs. They know me and say that I am good to go, no violation. (One saw that I was having trouble breathing and offered to get Medical Aid for me).
Maybe this guy with this “app” is a sex-offender turned cop informant? Trying to hem people up. We dont know. I DO KNOW that I am very wary of anyone trying to offer me help; especially sending me garbage in the mail labeled….
ATTENTION SEX OFFENDER
I understand why several are upset with this man for sending a postcard with SEX OFFENDER posted in red at the top of the card.. however.. I voluntarily put an app on my phone that lets me know when I’m getting too close to areas that I, personally, don’t want to be around (CSZfree from the PlayStore). I find it very helpful. AND .. I didn’t have to give them any information about myself to use it.
Luther – you don’t need to give them information about yourself. You’re walking around with it!
We should be reaching out to Mark and see if he is in fact the owner or in some way connected to this app and website. If he is not, then someone is impersonating a sex offender in order to help gain the confidence of others who might wind up handing over their information to person or entity with an almost certain nefarious purpose.
In 2008 I was working on something sort of similar. It was a tool that would help people reveal a list of address outside the red zones. Through automation this could have been pretty awesome. However, in my experience through development of the app and website, it became very clear that collecting a database of known locations wasn’t so easy after all for each area.
The system would have to know State by State, County by County, City by City what rules are in place, and have filters in place to handle criteria checked off by the person using the app (savable in preferences). The criteria could include adjustments based on what kind of locations were red zoned, whether it was from the center of a property or the property boundary, distance from, etc. The idea was to let people anonymously sign up to receive notifications of new addresses that would appear available against local classifieds as well.
Everything fizzled when I couldn’t even get the State of California to give me a list of registered day care centers that were considered red zoned by CDCR, let alone all the other red zone places which included “any place where children congregate”, per California CDCR’s rules.
The primary worry I see with this is that sex offenders would be handing over their GPS location, contacts and other possible sensitive information at any given time to someone who is basically going to use that information to stalk, harass or possible later extort the sex offender. There is absolutely no reason for any App in the marketplace to be targeted for use by registrants due to security and privacy concerns for the registrant. A website is less of a danger as it’s not tied to a device which can watch your phone calls, gps location, etc.
The underlying fact that the registry is being used a marketing tool is terrible but attorneys have been getting away with it for years, marketing how they can get registrants removed from the registry, which we all know is a money shake down sham.
I have done a little bit of poking around and can confirm there seems to be just one person behind this app and website. Seems odd I’ve never heard of this Mark Hall guy anywhere in the reform movement. That issue stands out at me. If he’s good with building apps and putting together a website, then why hasn’t he contributed to any organizations that we know about? Something seems odd.
If this person is building and app and website, there must be some money incentive behind it, or he’s gaming on collecting registrant data. I can’t think of any other reason he’d be doing this if he’s not already in the reform movement somewhere. This is VERY odd.
Agree with all you’ve said.
This Mark Hall seems to have no regard for others in his position and wishes to exploit his own community. He is exploiting people and making a vulnerable population even more vulnerable. Maybe we should send him some postcards too.
He is also VP of CANNA BUSINESS REPORTS INC. with LAWRENCE, KARL and MILA, MICHAEL G of the same address as a part of that corp.
M.G.M. CONTRACTING, INC. is also ran from that address along with another, with MILA, JULIA V also listed as an officer of the corp. Their HomeAdvisor page here has a business phone number as does Google Maps for the business if you’re interested in asking questions about the app, how to get it, how it works, maybe that’s a way to get support. Or maybe you just want to ask why the need for the postcard and why he’s using the registry to harass others, which is arguably unlawful under Florida law.
Mr. Hallmark is also an officer of WEED WAGON, INCORPORATED / WEED JUNCTION, INCORPORATED
So far, everything checks out as Mark being owner and operator of the somaps.com website. At this point though I believe we need to reach out to him to see what his motives are.
I thought it kind of funny that they would advertise “Basically GPS Monitoring” to all phones to keep people away from “danger zones”.
Even tho this person may mean well, what this does is put every sex offender on a GPS Monitoring system, so the State doesnt have to waste the resources?
I thought we were trying to get rid of that??