Missing your favorite bands?

If you missed performances by one of your favorite bands during a recent Northwest tour, Tourfilter solves that problem by tracking more than 13,000 artists and notifying people of their gigs via e-mail.

One can track artists by name or track performances at a specific nightclub.

Launched in Boston, Tourfilter has added more than 20 other cities, including Portland, Seattle and Vancouver, B.C. Spokane and Boise are not yet included.

It offers handy links to blogs covering bands and performers.

The “search all cities” option is handy. Plug in Arcade Fire in that window and you’ll get a quick itinerary for that Canadian art-rock group.

Stolen ID search

A recent Spokesman-Review business story talked about the growing problem of snoops finding information about you using the Web. The story mentioned several Web sites that can help find personal information on others, as well as tips on avoiding leaving too much data on the Web.

One recently launched site – www.stolenidsearch.com – was not included but deserves consideration.

StolenIDSearch allegedly scours the Web to find instances of a person’s Social Security number – which is not a good thing. If your number isn’t there, you get a green light.

Critics of the site say anyone entering their number there risks having it saved, discovered and possibly misused. The company’s founders, in a company blog at http://blog.trustedid.com, insist their Web site instantly deletes sensitive information immediately after testing a number.

For now, the site is operating and seems totally legit. What can’t be said is whether the search system it uses really does a solid job of tracking the Web for such material.