[castalia]

Does the fact that anyone can track you down these days worry you? Facebook has recently added a program where your friends can see your current location. I think this is going too far. With surveillance everywhere, your personal details such as address, affiliations, etc., online, etc., it seems that it is difficult to stay anonymous these days....unless you are elderly or from a third world country that does not have technology access.

Even though my forum posts are under a pseudonym, my real name is all over the internet because I am affiliated with a major university and have published a few articles/been written about in a couple of newspapers. Sometimes I think to myself that it would be extremely easy for an ex or an enemy of mine to defame me on the net by, for example, posting obscene things in a forum under my name. Technology is anathema to our privacy. Soon anyone will be able to track your location through your online accounts or your cell phone. What has the world come to?!!!

[aspen]

I'm really far from a fan. I like to keep a fairly low profile except to some of my closest friends but unfortunately, Facebook(or Google or whomever) still has the information.

It's really the Government that I don't like having gobs of information on me(tracking, etc...) even though they do.

[Plethora]

Delusions of grandeur.

[katrin]

As long as someone doesn't steal my identity, I don't care.

[Rationality]

Not currently. If it became a real problem I'd just change my name to something very common. When I Google my name the first couple of pages aren't even me, I'm not the first hit for my name on Facebook either. I don't particularly care if people know random facts about my life.

I like to speculate that in the future there will be advanced algorithms that can detect everything a person has written based on their writing style and habits. Over the years I end up talking about the same things online, saying the exact same phrases, misspelling the same words, using the same avatars and usernames. My pictures are out there. When the day comes that computers can 'recognize' a person by their mannerisms and photographs it will be interesting, especially if the identity can be tied to a real identity.

[think]

Castalia, yes. Well, I'm not sure if it is "worry" per se but it is more of an anxious feeling of how intrusive the internet is. Where is the line of privacy drawn? And really, you can be tracked down anywhere, even here, if someone was willing enough. You're linked to an email that may be linked to other accounts that are traceable to you. Your writing can be analyzed for word placement and commonalities unique to you (you'd have to be skilled to be more definitive in one's analysis though . . . I'd think . . . ) Although, my reasoning, that allows me to post on threads and partake in forums, is that I have nothing to hide in what I write. I am honest and sincere and I like the freedom to speak my mind. It is however, immensely unsettling to think some "creeper" can track you down. *shudders* *Think doesn't think she has creepers out there . . . ignorance is bliss :P* Protect yourself as best you can Castalia, that's all you can do, we live in a world of technology that will only become more and more invasive. (Maybe there should be a thread on how to do so (protect yourself)? It might be helpful . . . just a thought.)

[castalia]

That's why I don't post on my Facebook profile my location or where I intend to go. I read a story about a woman who posted an update on her profile "Jane is going to the Bahamas". Two days later, her house was robbed and the robbery was linked to one of her Facebook friends! Let's not even get into problems with posting pictures of new boyfriends/girlfriends etc.
I also find it scary that anyone can pay $30 to find out my current address, previous addresses, age, marital status, and get a google earth map of the exact building I live in! Scary!

[firebee]

It gets worse. I heard about a woman who, like, posted on the Internet that she was going to go to the store and get some bagels, and then she did, and a creepy Internet person hid under her car and cut her Achilles tendons with a razor blade so that he could steal the bagels.

The Internet makes everything much more scary. That's why I don't leave my apartment anymore, and instead surf the web all day.

Also, it petrifies me that someone could pay $30 to find out that I'm a 94-year-old woman living in Pueblo, Colorado. I don't want just anyone to have access to that sort of information!

[Synchronicity]

Google is the only organization whose volume of access to information frightens me. Fortunately, they seem to be egalitarian and benevolent dictators. Or perhaps that's just what they want us to think
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[Warrior]

I'm not too concerned about someone knowing where I was last night or that I'm going on vacation or things like that. I am concerned a little about the government having access to a lot of information that isn't really any of their business, but I think the biggest thing I try to guard against is identity theft. That's such a hassle to deal with that it just makes sense to take some extra precautions to try to avoid it.

[Booko]

	Originally Posted by castalia To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Does the fact that anyone can track you down these days worry you?

Yup, the entire notion of online backup bothers me even more. I like my data securely in my own home where if someone gets a warrant and takes it away for a peek at least I know that (not that I would ever expect such an event, but stuff happens).

We're already having our phone records peeked at. I don't need to make it easy to have anyone, individuals, businesses, or gov'ts have access to anything not absolutely necessary to accomplish what I want to online.

Even though my forum posts are under a pseudonym, my real name is all over the internet because I am affiliated with a major university and have published a few articles/been written about in a couple of newspapers. Sometimes I think to myself that it would be extremely easy for an ex or an enemy of mine to defame me on the net by, for example, posting obscene things in a forum under my name. Technology is anathema to our privacy. Soon anyone will be able to track your location through your online accounts or your cell phone. What has the world come to?!!!

The notion in the U.S. Constitution that we can actually be secure in our papers is pretty quaint these days. Of course that only applies to the gov't, while I see businesses as the more annoying nosy types.

My real name is very difficult to find on the Internet. Well, you can find it, but there are others with the same name (even though it's not so usual).

It's too bad you couldn't use a pseudonym like some fiction authors do. Or keep your birth name as a professional name but do everything else with a married surname or something of that sort.

---------- Post added 09-06-2010 at 11:44 PM ----------

Originally Posted by firebee To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

It gets worse. I heard about a woman who, like, posted on the Internet that she was going to go to the store and get some bagels, and then she did, and a creepy Internet person hid under her car and cut her Achilles tendons with a razor blade so that he could steal the bagels. The Internet makes everything much more scary. That's why I don't leave my apartment anymore, and instead surf the web all day. Also, it petrifies me that someone could pay $30 to find out that I'm a 94-year-old woman living in Pueblo, Colorado. I don't want just anyone to have access to that sort of information!

You can joke all you want, firebee, but I've been online long enough to see how someone being careless about mentioning they were home got their house broken into, having their real name out there got them a stalker, or mentioning they were alone resulted in much worse.

And that was before the Internet when there were relatively few people online.

[lurk]

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[HoodMasterMIND]

its not delusions of grandeur..its reality. if you have enemies its nothing for them to track you, your last addresses, your family members. your location because of facebook. the OP is absolutely right. im pissed off because there are so many sites out there dedicated to personal information. if you delete one, your info is on a bunch of others.

i google my name and am surprised at the stuff that comes up. scary shi*t. annoying shi*t. just imagine in ten years. there is NO privacy anymore. all it costs is 30 bucks or less.

[castalia]

Yeah, people can joke all they want but the amount of privacy invasion is frightening these days. And no, it has nothing to do with any delusions of grandeur.
Let's say you get into a fight with someone and they post trash about you online, using your real name? What if you have a psycho ex or hateful colleagues who just want to destroy your reputation? You are telling me that stuff like this is not scary? If not, maybe you haven't been out in the real world long enough.

[JTG]

	Originally Posted by Synchronicity To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Google is the only organization whose volume of access to information frightens me. Fortunately, they seem to be egalitarian and benevolent dictators. Or perhaps that's just what they want us to think To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

The real problem isn't necessarily google, since they haven't used their info to dominate society yet. The problem is people allowing their google-tracked info to be publicly visible.

[hide=As long as you set your preferences right, you should be fine]
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[/hide]

[blueback]

I read a book a while ago called How To Be Invisible that I think everyone should read, if only to get some perspective.
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Basically, very few people have a compelling reason to make an effort to ensure they are hard to find, and those people are usually criminals of some sort. Average people figure it's not worth the effort, and if they did it they'd just look suspicious anyway. But, there's always the chance that something will happen that will make you really really wish you were harder to find, and that doesn't involve you doing anything wrong.

The examples, by definition, are easy to dismiss as "paranoid" or "unlikely" but that's exactly the point. Protecting your identity is like buying insurance. It can be a pain, but when some random person who wishes you ill tries to track you down by running your license plate, and only finds the address of an LLC registered in another state, that insurance you bought pays for itself.

I actually am conflicted on this topic. On the one hand I FEEL like the more open and transparent everything is the better off we will all be; that people who have something to hide must be doing something wrong. But intellectually I KNOW that secrets are power, and giving them all up renders you nearly powerless. It's not even a matter of someone wanting to keep something private just cuz they're shy or it's frowned upon; it's a matter of maintaining some amount of control over your life. For example, if the police know about all the money you have, and decide you're a suspect in a drug investigation, they can seize ALL of your money, or at least freeze it all. No more groceries, no more bus fare, no more water bill. But if you have a secret stash of mad money you can take care of yourself while you work things out. It's a risk management thing.

[Firebrand]

Try
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if you care about your search history being tracked. As far as search engines go, I just search for really really weird things on occasion to throw off their data-mining efforts.

Personally, I maintain a limited web footprint by choice (I'm just busy for one, and I don't want stalkers to track me for two).

[JTG]

From what i've read, the biggest targets on grounds of privacy/security are government employees (perhaps also high level corporate employees) or those closely in contact with them. Having access to some important secrets means that people are more willing to pry into your movements or target you for identity fraud.

Other people who get hit on such grounds are usually either just caught in a widely cast net or have enemies with means, haha. Surfing on clean sites and avoiding contaminated email is probably more important than covering one's tracks, when it comes to risk of privacy invasion

[Mogura]

Originally Posted by castalia To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

Yeah, people can joke all they want but the amount of privacy invasion is frightening these days. And no, it has nothing to do with any delusions of grandeur. Let's say you get into a fight with someone and they post trash about you online, using your real name? What if you have a psycho ex or hateful colleagues who just want to destroy your reputation? You are telling me that stuff like this is not scary? If not, maybe you haven't been out in the real world long enough.

I think a healthy dose of paranoia is good, if not fully warranted if you happen to be living in the US, where the laws do fuck-all with regards to protecting (potential) victims of identity theft.

There should be a federally mandated law stating that an entity cannot publish a private individual's personal details (name, age, home address, etc.) without first having obtained that individual's written legal consent...

[JTG]

"By clicking below you acknowledge that you have read and agree with our Privacy policy."

E-signatures were legalized in the US over a decade ago, and i think sites make privacy policies and terms of use so opaque on purpose to discourage people from actually reading what they're allowing the company to do.

[lurk]

	Originally Posted by JTG To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	"By clicking below you acknowledge that you have read and agree with our Privacy policy." E-signatures were legalized in the US over a decade ago, and i think sites make privacy policies and terms of use so opaque on purpose to discourage people from actually reading what they're allowing the company to do.

You mean you don't read the entire 55 pages of terms and conditions that the iTunes store seems to update regularly and requires you to agree to?

[tracemhunter]

Everything we do is monitored so there is no sense in hiding any of it. I deleted (not deactivated) my Facebook account about a year ago and haven't looked back since. I recently received a random Facebook confirmation email on another email account and changed the password and deleted it.

One time one of our subcontractors took some equipment and wouldn't answer phone calls so I went online and purchased his information based on name and city and was able to get his address, cell phone, childrens' names, and all kinds of other stuff for a mere $2. With a visit from an attorney we were able to get the equipment back the next day.

[plotthickens]

That information isn't being used poorly... yet. Why allow more of my info into that big database in the sky when it's nearly certain it'll be used against me in the future?

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

[blueback]

	Originally Posted by plotthickens To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	...it'll be used against me in the future?

I think that's really what all of this comes down to; the idea that even if you're innocent the information gathered about you will be used against you, rather than for you.

This makes a certain amount of sense. For example, cops can't use anything you say in support of you when you're on trial, they can only use it against you. In a larger sense, no one has any incentive to use information to support you...except you.

So, I propose a law that requires any person or company that aggregates information to make each person's file immediately available to them if they request it, the same way credit information has to be provided. That way people can access the information that specifically refers to them, so they can use it to support themselves. For example, if someone gets automatically added to the terrorist watch list (or whatever) someone could mine their own data to prove that they don't belong on it. The place accusing someone of wrongdoing isn't going to make the extra effort to disprove their own assertion; that has to be done by the accused.

The key is that people need to be able to access all the various databases that mention them, with as few barriers as possible. They shouldn't have to pay the market rate to see their own data. If they did have to, those companies would actually turn a profit off of intentionally injecting errors into the data so that people HAD to pay to second-check it.

[Antares]

You know, one thing that scares me even more is the mind reading headset I posted in the other thread. All of the information on the internet that I may be unwittingly giving is scary enough, but I really don't want to think about a machine getting inside my head, one day being able to read my brainwaves. I feel like my identity is about to be annihilated. I want to erase my facebook profile and start over. I hate not being able to control my own information.