As part of the relief effort following Monday’s bombing at the Boston Marathon, the Red Cross and Google.org set up websites for people to locate missing loved ones.
Google.org — the search giant’s non-profit organization — launched its website, Google Person Finder. The service “helps people reconnect with friends and loved ones during natural and humanitarian disasters,” said the company on its site.
The site provides search fields for both people looking for information about someone close to the disaster, and for people who have information about someone close to the disaster.
Since the information is being crowdsourced through the Internet, however, the company also offered a disclaimer about the privacy and accuracy of the information in the database.
“PLEASE NOTE: All data entered will be available to the public and viewable and usable by anyone,” said the company on the project’s site.
“Google does not review or verify the accuracy of this data,” it read.
As of 6:20pm ET, the project was tracking around 2500 records.
The company also used the project as part of its relief efforts after the 2011 9.0 earthquake and subsequent tsunami that devastated the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Japan.
The American Red Cross also activated its Safe and Well database.
People immediately affected by the disaster can register themselves in the database as safe and well, allowing concerned loved ones a place to search for them.