Slashdot Mirror
Social Network Users Have Ruined Their Privacy
Steve Kerrison writes "'There's little point in worrying about ID cards, RFID tags and spyware when more and more people are throwing away their privacy anyway. And the potential consequences are dire.' I've written an article on the dangers of social networks and how many users seem to forget just how public the information they post can be. This follows a warning sent out by the CS department of Bristol University, advising students that they risk lost job opportunities, getting in trouble with their parents and more, if they don't take care. The warning, however, really applies to all social network users, be they college students or over-zealous blog posters."
Between sexual predators, kids who tell all and then regret it when it comes time to look for a job, our daughters posts nearly nude photos and our sons enjoying that a bit more than is healthy, these are a bad idea. I just checked the traffic numbers for Myspace, 3rd most popular in the US and 5th on the planet... Where are the safeguards?
There is a difference between throwing your freedom away, and having it taken away against your own will.
but at the same time, more and more people losing that privacy are becoming more and more popular than they would have been any other way... Blogging, etc. makes Geeks today turn in to the popular cheerleeders and football players of yesteryear....Just as those cheerleeders could have lost a job opportunity by being the town slut, the bloggers can get in to hot water if they don't watch what they say and do all the time.
I advice us all to not be social.
I HATE YOU ALL!!
To those born in the 1990s, the @ symbol is more familar than the dial tone. Gone is pen and paper, replaced with keyboards and pixels. Friendships are made via mathematical graphs instead of face-to-face contact. Teenagers no longer crave privacy, instead opting to publish their entire life in a blog. Small circles of friends now strech around the world. Graphical paradise has replaced your own backyard.
Welcome to the @Generation.
I wonder if I use bold in my signature, people will notice my posts.
News flash: If you say dumb things on the Internet, someone might notice.
How this constitutes a hazard unique to "social networks" is neither explained nor hinted at.
The article presents a non-issue wrapped in snark and hype.
While the consequences may be as dire as you claim, this is not certain. Even if true, it may still be rational for people to tell all on the web.
In the mid nineties a friend of mine who was putting a game-theory heavy education to work as a top notch security consultant claimed that we had passed a phase boundary and that privacy was essentially dead. At which point he started "living publicly," doing things like making his daily schedule (in detail) available to the world, sending all his receipts (for everything) to the IRS,etc.
When challenged on this rather odd behavior, and asked what he was trying to prove and to whom, he replied that he wasn't trying to prove anything to anyone except perhaps himself. His thinking was that having no privacy isn't nearly as bad as having no privacy and not coming to terms with that fact. He then walked us through a few cases (such as blackmail) and showed whywhen you were better off not getting in the bind of acting as if you had secrets when in fact others knew them.
Perhaps the MySpace people are at least subconsciously reacting in the same way to the growing threats to our privacy--by getting it all out there, so if anyone tries to use it against them they are effectively immunized.
--MarkusQ
When posting something online about yourself consider is it something you'd want your mom, your boss, or a sex offender to know about. Why? Because all three of those will have access to it. If the answer is no in any case, then don't post it. Don't assume that they aren't savvy enough, Google has lowered the barrier so almost anyone can find what they want. Don't rely on technical protections of sites either, especially sites explicitly designed for sharing information.
The web is public, that's just how it goes. Don't put personal information on it that you don't want the public to see, and yes your mom is part of the public.
So what? Cry me a river, but how stupid do you have to be to put up embarrassing personal info and pictures damaging to your reputation, and then be surprised when they are used to be embarrassing and damaging?
I had a friend who put up a simple myspace page, and thought it was anonymous, and was shocked when using just the nick and e-mail she had, i was able to trace it through other pages to get her home address and phone number. Took 3 minutes. People don't think. And no amount of legislation or news stories will change that.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
in California you can always find social network, in Soviet Russia socialist find you!!
Why UNIX?
One of the benefits of having a more open and honest society will be the acceptance of practices most people do but few admit to doing. In this respect, social networks mean social progress.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
People forget that if they put something online for their friends to read, other people can also read it.
A perfect example of this is my wife (soon to be ex-wife). About 7 months ago, she decided that she really didn't want to be married anymore, and that she would be moving back to her parents' house. As she expressed it to me, she just wasn't "attracted" to me anymore.
Well, about a month ago, my sister called me up and said that she found my wife's MySpace page (no, I won't link to it here), and that she listed herself as a lesbian there. Now, my wife had told me years ago (before we got engaged) that she was bisexual, and so it was no surprise. At that time, I had promised not to tell anyone about it (a promise that I kept). In the course of going to file our divorce papers (just waiting for the hearing to make it final), I mentioned to her that my sister saw her MySpace page, and my wife was surprised at it. (As a result, she released my from my promise, but I'm still posting this anonymously.)
It simply hadn't occurred to her that someone outside of her circle of online friends would actually look up her MySpace page. She didn't even try to hide it (her normal email, used her real maiden name, the user ID was one of her usual online nicknames, etc)!
People just don't seem to grasp the full ramifications of all this "neato" technology.
Which is more dangerous; the measures by which we "lose" our "privacy", or the people who care about the content of our blogs/lives? The argument that we have to be absolutely status-quo when in view of any camera/search engine/profiler I think is more dangerous than the perceived demons. It's funny how people who are paranoid of losing their "privacy" are really losing it every day, whether they're giving it away or it's being taken, but instead of realising that whatever you would like to do or say or think or feel is more important than the demands made on your experiences by some other person, they go into a panic mode and start putting the muscle behind the "Big Brother", telling people to "behave themselves". That makes them nothing but the jackbooted intellects of the fascist ideals they are anti-promoting. And as for
"privacy", I always hear the same thing about "a little liberty" shed for "a little security", but few people today have even pinpointed on their own whether their "privacy" is liberty or security. Saying "a little bit of both" is a cop-out, when the matter is up for judgement.
Erosion of privacy is when personal details about your life are taken from you. It's when police chiefs talk about tapping everyones home or looking up library records without a warrant. If I willfully give away information about myself then I never did consider it very private then, did I? This crap about lost opportunities, while perhaps partially true in today's freakishly religious climate, will not be such an issue as these things become more common. This is absolute proof that the minority voice controls the world. Damn near everyone has to lie about who they are because they're afraid everyone else lives some higher "moral" standard and will look down on them. This is simply not true. Even the noisy types who push this false sense of morality on us hardly practice what they preach. As a global community develops and communication with the entire world becomes simple and cheap the world will shift as knowledge becomes free. You will no longer have to worry about losing your job because there is a picture of you with a joint on someones myspace page or your hair is dyed neon blue. The transition period will not be smooth, but I welcome the day. All this article does is beg us to continue living in fear of some invisible and nonexistent moral majority. I, for one, refuse.
It is already happening. The company I work for was founded by two young entrepreneurs that grew up in the age where knowledge was free and they learned that masturbation won't cause hair to grow on your hands or your dick to fall off. They learned that the D.A.R.E. cop that told them the story of the young man who died from ONE hit from a joint was LYING. They realized that nobody else they grew up with believed this horseshit anymore either. They only care about your skill and your work ethic. As the younger generations start to take back this world it will become a better place to live because of the global community and available, simple worldwide communication.
Do not fear it. Embrace it.
The only thing that the social networks can change is that previously, you could be an idiot and no one noticed until it was too late. Now, it's easy and fun to make your idiocy known to the world.
I once got a job because someone saw me writing somewhat-smart-type comments on Usenet.
If I had a web design company, I'd hire people who can make their MySpace page have interesting content, look good and pass W3C validation... =)
I used to have a friend whose name was Robert Smith. I felt sorry for him, having such a common name. In today's world, it has its advantages. Anyone trying to dig up dirt on him with Google is going to have a difficult job.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
The quote from Bristol uni is sensible and even mildly interesting. After that, it's just another tired rant about blogs (some someone who appears to be using forum software to run his own blog, which doesn't help to convince that he "gets" blogs at all) and various other sites he clearly doesn't like.
Obviously it's a dumb idea to post information you don't want published in public. Sites like MySpace have introduced a lot of newbies to social networking, and they'll take a while to get the hang of it, but it doesn't follow that social networking sites are inherently about loss of privacy.
And chat rooms are dead because of sexual predators?! I still see a lot of chat rooms, and surely a lot of that traffic has moved onto virtual worlds. Do we have a story about why Second Life has been shut down because of sexual predators? Thought not. A lot depends on much the site creators think about security, privacy and so on, preferably before going live rather than after the first six crises are reported in the international press. From the little I've seen of MySpace, it looks like a "bolt on safeguards in response to crisis" sort of outfit.
Virtually serving coffee
Things aren't "private" if they're willingly disclosed. Warning people against providing genuine home addresses, or phone numbers, via the internet is, perhaps, valid advice - however, teenagers regularly disclose mobile numbers to people they barely know in "real life" scenarios, and there's as much chance of something happening in that kind of situation as there is in an electronically-based one.
I believe that these concerns are just left over from an ageing population that doesn't really trust modern technology, or thinks that anything besides face-to-face communication is unnatural. I'm sure people once thought this about telephones, too.
was an english suspect in the recent english street walkers murders (it was reported in germany), Tom had an myspace account, the media thus determined he alone was guilty becuase he had a myspace account.
Tom was released, but he must be regarded by all persons now as a deviant pervert for having a myspace account and knowing the persons. His employer is Tesco's (a walmart type operation).
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
The right to privacy is an important one, because it provides us with refuge from totalitarian authority that would seek to enslave us, to use information about us against us. But even more important than the right to privacy is the right to live freely. One might say that the right to privacy is important insofar as it is one of the pillars that support the right to live freely.
How can one live freely if one must hide behind privacy in order to avoid getting in trouble with various authorities? If one can only be a dissident, contrarian, or black sheep if one hides within the safe confines of one's own skull, is that not what we used to call in oldspeak "oppression"?
I see a bolder way, in living openly, freely, and standing up against those who would punish us for exercise freedoms. To use an easy example, if recreational drug users were a unified voting block, they could take over the country in an election cycle. But because the law makes it dangerous to use drugs recreationally, users are forced to protect themselves with a shield of privacy (which has been steadily eroded by the war on drugs over the years). If everyone would just stand up and openly do what they believed in, they would not be politically isolated and would not be able to be pushed around.
Similarly, the gay rights movement really started picking up steam only after people began coming out of the closet in droves. Privacy protected them, but it also contained and enslaved them. By stepping out into the public realm, they have forced society to deal with them, and through the necessary struggles that are still ongoing, have found increasing acceptance in our culture.
It's true that if you are a fool, and do stupid things, and people find out about it, your life will become more difficult. But there is a difference between foolishness and good people standing up in order to live the lives they wish to choose. Let the fools of the world weed themselves out of the breeding population, but let oppressors and would-be oppressors everywhere quake at the thought of a brave world of proud, public freedom-weilding citizens who are unashamed to let the world see their lives in a warts-and-all nakedness, which really is more beautiful than the idealized, airbrushed nakedness once you realize that the latter is a hollow lie, and that truth is the only substance out of which we build our lives.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Perhaps they are just redefining the boundaries of "reputation" for themselves.
Get your tagline off my lawn.
Happy Christmas to my mom, my boss, sex offenders and the police.
That's the Devil's Instrument!! ESPECIALLY in Soviet Russia. Unless you're apostate, you should use a satellite uplink headset. That's what ALLAH uses!! Not the same thang as a tellyphone!! Hide in the mountains and talk to the one God ALLAH on a satellite uplink headset, and keep a close eye out for damn Soviet Russian Secret Invaders. If they catcha doin' what you shouldn't be doin' THEY'RE GONE TAKE AWAY YER JOB OPERTUNITIES!! PRAISE ALLAH!! AMEN!!
I really do, because if something like that doesn't happen, the future country of my grandson is royally fucked.
Yes even though it is now technically open to "anyone", the privacy controls on there allow you to lock your profile down to the point so that only those you know or trust can access it even to individual sections (i.e. photos/personal details etc). I feel far more secure using that than MySpace, where its either all or nothing (in fact its like that with all the other social sites that I have used as well).
So, what's his name, date-of-birth, SSN, Driver's License Number, Address and Phone Number?
Oh, wait. Maybe privacy isn't dead, and there ARE limitations and ramifications to living publicly.
Your friend is either a hypocrit or a twit. I find it best to avoid both, let alone follow the advice of a fool.
The only difference between "social networking" on a forum or one of the Web 2.0 sites and the chit-chat in a local coffee shop is that everyone can hear the gossip and commentary unless the content is deleted. Even then, archive sites still sometimes keep copies of the "embarassing" content.
If you're not willing to take the heat of people looking for someone to blame or hate, don't post. And never, ever forget about issues like libel and slander, because even the best of wisecracking comedians get tagged as producing "hateful" material by people and groups that have a chip on their shoulder.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
It's one thing to discard privacy in the name of a liberating freedom of expression, but with that you have to accept the fact that people now have the ability to make presumptions about you based on how this information is leaked to them and what information is true. If you make certain of revealing all of your dark secrets -- dirty sexual things, for instance -- then the latter is no longer a problem: they have the story. Now comes the disconnect, however, as a lot of people really aren't as open as you and still cling onto values at odds with what you say and do. Ever try running for office? It's the same effect and it has destroyed politicians over some of the simplest falls from grace to underground things that were never intended to get out.
Here's my question: is it safer to bear all secrets and have none, and risk offending a lot of people and putting yourself in harm's way if one of them takes it personally, or should we just use some basic common sense, be open with a lot of things but hold the things that might get us in trouble as secret as possible? We can never assume how every person will act, so taking at some precautions is always a social necessity. I'm not saying you should hide all of your pornography and put Bibles on the table in fear of someone noticing -- if you can get away with something, then you're fine. It's when people start avoiding you that you should either change, make new friends, or try to change them, aka, when it's a bit too late to remove that factor from the equation.
no... I'm not kidding
But reading the quote, one wonders who is this Andrew Jallon guy. Well, a quick google and you can see check out his discus and shotput attempts (not very good). PUBLIC real-estate tax records give a strong implication as to where he lives. And finally, Andrew Jallon's bigoted comments end up on Slashdot. Did he expect this? Should he have expected it. Should we all be paranoid about every post...lest someone take it and run?
I've always been blatantly honest with my family and friends. If an employer won't give me a job, his/her loss. I'll find a good one elsewhere because I'm good at what I do.
What a load of horse shit this article is. This is the internet age, nobody gives a shit what random joe #3512351 is doing.
If it's on the Internet, it is not reliably private in any way, shape, or form, from the most popular MySpace or Facebook down to the tiny Linux box I hooked up two hours ago behind a pro-grade firewall.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
The privacy issue du jour in these past two decades has been homosexuality. You can't tell by looking at someone if they are gay. It shouldn't matter if they are or not, but many people (who I will declare as narrow minded pricks) do think it matters. Not only will these type of people judge homosexuals unfairly, another subset of these people may commit violence upon homosexuals.
Employers can judge you for any number of reasons. Employers are also looking for any reason to filter you out and judge you even before you can prove to them that you'd be a great employee. I don't like the fact that employers judge me because I have a socially and politically charged blog of my own, but I must come to terms with that by hiding it from them so they can't use that against me.
People make bad judgements for stupid reasons, and make stupid decisions based on those bad judgements. Those decisions affect people's lives. The fear of you or your family not being able to survive is a great motivating factor to not post intimate details of your life online for everyone to see. If you must, keep it anonymous.
Society isn't open because there are too many closed minds. There is then no other choice but to hide information that close minds should not see. The last thing I need is my son or my job taken away from me because of some idiot reading something I posted which has nothing to do with either my work ethic or my ability as a parent.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
While you may keep such information on people you worked with over ten years ago, I don't. The fact that he was living in such a way that he "had no secrets" doesn't any any way imply that I (or for that matter, anyone else) followed him around collecting the information. His first name was "Dave," he would be about 40 now, and that's about all I recall.
And to forestall another line of troll-attack I can see coming: he would not reveal passwords, etc., though he did point out that working on the assumption that all his personal information was public knowledge forced him to think carefully about his password policy.
--MarkusQ
Never. The only difference between now and The Good Old Days(TM) is the distance that information about you can be obtained from. Where as in TGOD(TM) you actually had to get off your butt and travel to the town a person lived in to have a chat with the local town gossips, now you just need to check google. But it's all the same. Small towns meant everyone knew everyone and all about them. Larger towns and cities gave us anonymity but people don't want that, so large cities breed loud and bold types to stand out so that people see them. The internet and social networking just makes it easier for us to stake our claim in the public square and let people know about us. In the end though, it's all the same, anyone interested can find out anything they want about you, they just have to search for it.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Hi.
Internet is much more like a big mall.
Like in the real life a bit of well behave is good to everyone (even to the bad ones hehehe).
You got drunk, well ok. Even in a bar for many reasons this could happen once. Just think on how you will show yourself when you'll be out...
But that does not make you a real bad person ? Some may think yes.
Somebody can have fun telling that story to someone else at work. And maybe you will regret it. And it will really get you down.
But yet again, the bad person is maybe the one spreading around the story (and of course he do not drink).
Depending on how/what you think the internet is you might act accordingly to your "feeling" (especially if you are drunk and alone and upset for whatever reasons...). You can see discutable things on the net which are due to loneliness and alcohol... And evil behavior too. Good to know. But these things ruin the reality of life and make it trivial...
I meant that is not because you are alone in your rooom that then, you can dirt the world...
My point is that the internet could be a clean place if you keep it clean.Just... Behave.
Watching violence doe not make you a violent person (if you are naturally not one) But diffusing it, yes it is. Especially on your own will.
If someone or your boss think it is his concern to know if you like drinking or he might arrange something . And you too.
Yet again knowing this should bring more knowledge on how informations and message can travel to you.
I am off topic i guess. But if you have to give information on the net. Behave.
speak for yourself please..
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Just try your hotmail or msn or every thing else nickname in google and you will know all about the comments somebody did about a topic. Spooky.
pictures or GTFO
Just to clarify: We are all part of many social networks whether or not we participate in social networking websites.
That's a very fine sentiment my friend. But just wait until you get rejected from a plum job because of something you posted after a couple of beers several years before (and had probably forgotten about).
Personally I'd rather hire someone who's very open about their personal life. If I hire someone who hides everything I can be pretty sure he'll hide things from me at some point.
Would you hire someone who claims to have never seen online porn?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Yeah, you know how to install an OS, ignore phishers, and you won't execute a virus or rootkit. So you're in a few percent of the internet 'consumers'.
I wish he'd mentioned emails, too. Here's the lecture: Don't ever put something in an email that you wouldn't want everyone to read.
Here's the more subtle lecture: Always send to your personal email account any work email involving you that you might want a copy of later for legal reasons... and if it's for very legal reasons, cc your personal email account when communicating to HR or Legal at work...
On a blog, I can write what I want and give up as much or as little of my personal information and thus my privacy as I want. An RFID tag in my passport is forced onto me, with or without my consent.
The key difference here is whether the person wants to give up his or her privacy. It's their decision. I'm a firm believer in personal freedom, and if someone wants to hold their naked butt into the webcam, together with their phone# and address, it's their decision.
Today, more and more decisions are taken out of our hands to "protect us". I don't want to be protected. I want to be free. Freedom of choice is what makes us human. That's one of the few things I agree with with the bible boys. After all, according to them Adam ate from the tree of knowledge and thus we're forced to choose between good and evil.
I kinda don't want to revert that.
Let them choose. Inform them of the implications, but the choice is theirs.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I think we should re-think whether permanent archiving and full republishing of web pages should be permitted at all. Not only does it arguably conflict with copyright law, I think it also has a chilling effect on on-line discussions and free exchange of information.
It seems to be that anything that employers want to use to exclude you and depress wages they will do. That's common sense but in a way it's pretty creepy. After social networking, maybe they can say no based on where you live, or if any of your relatives are in jail, or the number of speeding tickets you have or your medical history.
Don't rely on technical protections of sites either, especially sites explicitly designed for sharing information.
Good point. This happened with Deja News - most people figured Usenet expired after a few weeks.
Also, most sites' Terms of Service have elastic clauses. Some bankruptcy acquisitions have even sold off data as "assets" without ToS protections that were formerly afforded to the data. It would be nice if there were some case law establishing protection on this kind of data.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Seems like the myspace users are now paying the price of lack of privacy, agreed. Why would anyone want to post all the details about their lives? Myspace becomes a giant warehouse to get information that people can use against you. Imagine, you are interviewing for that job that you want and you loose your chance because your potential employer decides to do a myspace query and doesn't like what they find. It has already been shown that employers have some defacto ability to regulate what their employees do in their off time by threatening them with termination. If you are concerned about privacy, by all means, do not use myspace. Privacy is not such a bad thing and Americans do need to be better at observing the TMI rule (Too Much Information)
It doesn't have to be conscious.
In other words, they could be just as clueless as you say and still be following a rational approach to a shift in privacy norms. This could be a result of low-level tendencies to "do the right thing" in changing social conditions or even a specific evolved response to exactly this sort of societal shift. There's no reason to suppose that they have to be going though any sort of conscious analysis, any more than we have to assume that sheep start each day asking themselves "to flock, or not to flock, that is the question."
While the technology involved is new, the demands it places on individuals is not. It may well be that we have an innate sensitivity to gradual loss of privacy and a linked and equally innate desire not to be seen as "the guy with secrets" when the shift is complete. In pretty much all such cases that I can imagine occurring in pre-history there is a smaller upfront cost to "coming clean with the tribe" than the eventual cost of getting caught. Since we haven't seen this play out yet, it may well turn out to be the case here as well.
--MarkusQ
Here's the thing: I'd rather not be hired by somebody prepared to discriminate against me because (for example) I like to get drunk with my friends. Who doesn't? Find me a working stiff who doesn't enjoy a few beers or didn't get up to drunken antics in their teens. They're few and far between. I'm not saying go all-out and tell the world you're a borderline alcoholic, but I'm not going to stop being who I am online because of worries about careers. Society focuses far too much on careers and jobs and I wish it wasn't that way. I'm a good guy, I don't feel embarassed about anything on my Myspace besides the joke "Who I'd Like To Meet" which reads something like "Girls who would consider sleeping with me". Anyone who knows me will know this is tongue-in-cheek and I'm 100% certain that if my current employers had stumbled upon it they would have just laughed and made a joke about it in the office, not refused to hire me. I wouldn't want to work for a company who would.
Just for the record: I don't actually drink, but you know, I might!
This little tidbit from the blog of a LEO (sheriff). And yes, his boss knows about it and he doesn't say anything in it that he wouldn't want the whole world to know.
... interesting ... locations, hmm-'kay?
Had a young gentleman put in an application at work last month. Looked sharp! Sounded sharp! Folks everywhere were all sorts of happy.
Unfortunately, the officer doing the background checks put the applicants name into Google and came up with his MySpace account.
Tip for the Wise: if you're going to apply at a Law Enforcement agency, take the paean to the Mighty Marijuana Plant off your MySpace page, along with the albums dedicated to photos of you imbibing the Wonder Weed in various
"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it." Col. Jeff Cooper
Not quite as difficult as you may think.
You need a couple 'more important details on the Non-President, such as racecar driving and business owner, and include those as "must words". Then put a lot of things in the "do not include" field like "Do not include President".
Yes it might take a small amount of time measured in hours, but it's far from impossible.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Mod parent up, that's a good-ass post. Succinct.
The same sort of leakage can occur with a blog, on an ordinary personal page, or via a much-forwarded email message.
.microsoft.com address. Similar behavior is known within pretty much every release of MS's systems. If you're running Microsoft software, you should assume that anything on your computer is accessible to Microsoft any time you're connected to the Net. Not understanding this is simply naive.
;-)
Actually, it's quite a lot worse than that. It's quite easy for things on your computer that you consider "hidden" to become public knowledge.
For example, I've had many discussions with people over ways to hide things online, so that you can access them if you know the URL, but the URL can't be found by any method other than guessing. The best-know is hiding stuff behind an index.html file, but there are other methods.
A problem with this is illustrated by recent discussions of leakage via the google toolbar. This is a useful tool, and lots of people use it. But there have been many reports from people doing web testing (and thus watching the server logs) of an interesting phenomenon: If you have the google toolbar installed, and use your browser to access a "hidden" web page on your server, you will sometimes see a visit by Googlebot to that URL soon after, often within a minute or so. And soon after that, a google search will find things in your "hidden" page. Google "google toolbar googlebot" for more information.
What's going on is that the google toolbar is running as part of your browser, and it has access to the browser's data. This includes the URLs of all the pages you visit.
I mentioned this case first because it's not a Microsoft product, and I didn't want to distract people by starting off with MS bashing. But, of course, MS is notorious for leaks like this, and they're generally not accidents or bugs. When the very first MS internet capabilities came out, engineers quickly reported seeing unexpected modem activity when "nothing was accessing the Net". Investigations showed that the activity was due to listings of the contents of the disk being transmitted to a
In a similar vein, there was the fuss a couple of years back, when msn.com was caught extracting things (mostly images) from customers' "private" data (mostly email) and using them in advertising. The first reaction was for msn.com to point out that the TOS stated that any data on their servers was their property, to do with as they wish. They quickly realized that this was a major PR blunder, and publicly backed off. But again, if you think they aren't doing such things now, you're just naive. You should expect that any ISP will behave this way if they think they can get away with it.
We also had a lot of discussions here of the Sony CD rootkit. Who would have thought that just "playing" a CD would install spyware in your computer? Well, we now know, and some of us are a bit less naive.
Open-source software is much less likely to contain spyware, but it's not guaranteed. The mozilla-suite browsers are open-source, but have you actually dug through the code? If not, you could easily be victimized by any new release, or by any plugin that you install. Granted, there are lots of people on the lookout for spyware in the most-used open-source software, but they might not have spotted the more subtle problems. And the google toolbar shows how easy it can be to trick users into opening their system up to outside access. MS isn't nearly the only culprit here. (They're just the most brazen and unapologetic.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
I have to disagree here. Depending on how many years each, in the past 4-5 generations we have irrevocably altered what it means to be human. Someone else said "the tech is new, the demands are not". This is also untrue.
... that wouldn't be *downloadable* ten years later. There's still current rules against recording people without telling them, but those laws are going to creak at the seams very soon.
I would restart the clock with the arbitrary round date of Jan 1 1990 as its own "new generation". This is the age of information connectivity. (First 5 years open to discussion, absolutely in full swing in 1995 with the advent of GUI browsers and Win95 unleashing the floodgates.)
I wasn't QUITE "unwashed" - I had sponged off - but I still walked into the trap of mis-understanding exactly how archiving works in search engines.
I do not expect to have any serious secrets withstand a full scale expert profile; no one but the best can block that. I feel/hope the happy medium is reasonable shielding, enough to keep the worst damaging pics away from a casual search.
What used to be a serious part of classical manners was "none of your business". Now, that piece of advice is gone forever. Anyone can visit the restroom and google the guy from the party on their cell phone, and come back armed.
Even if you did stunts at college
Web 2.0 is all about the cheap fame; but pretty soon the costs are going to catch up (say in 5 years).
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
That's why I am ... an anonymous coward !
I don't want to leave a trace trail online because I cannot erase it.
Social networking sites increasingly get you friends, appointments/engagements, and jobs. Yes, people who previously didn't might now exclude you based on the public information about you, but so many more people know about you and can connect with you that you may just be better off.
What we're seeing is the tipping point at which the risks of giving up some kinds of privacy are overcome by the undeniable power of the network to create and maintain social circles (and all of the advantages that they confer) by uniting like-thinking folks at a rate never before seen.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Look, when posting blogodreck about something somebody wrote, link to the actual article. This is supposedly about an article written by Prof. Nigel Smart at the University of Bristol. And it doesn't have a link to the article, or any useful reference to it. It doesn't even link to Prof. Smart's home page.
Here's Prof. Smart's home page.. He's a cryptographer, and one of the people behind elliptic curve cryptography, one of the alternatives to prime-number based systems. But I can't find any reference to risks of social networking on his pages.
So all we really have is some unknown blogger saying the obvious.
I've been saying for a while now, "in order for Big Brother to be a problem, he has to care about you". While a lot of the things I've said online have been embarassing in retrospect, I haven't confessed to anything that could land me in jail, and I haven't done anything that will land me in jail. Beyond some anonymous person smirking at what an idiot they think I am, or perhaps a friend thinking I'm a bit odd, there are no real consequences to this stuff. Also, people first would have to know me, and do a lot of data mining. This would be especially complicated by the numerous handles I've used over the years, and the possibility that someone might steal my handle, and the fact that there's actually someone with my name out there too. It's not like I'm Joe Smith either. I have a fairly unusual name in real life. If you are Joe Smith, BB's job is even harder. At some point, all this information has to be processed by a human being, and if it's merely embarassing, what's the big deal?
This kind of stuff is usually only a problem if you're running for office. In the previous generation it was "did he smoke pot", well... duh! A whole bunch of them smoked pot, and then they all turn around and use it against eachother. What a bunch of dolts. Today's generation doesn't care if you're gay, or like to do it with stuffed animals, or have done drugs, etc. Good grief. In part of my city, they don't even care if you are still smoking crack, they will still elect you (I live in DC).
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I think everyone who reads slashdot is well aware of the loss of privacy associated with social networking sites.
But back then only our friends&family knew about it. I wiped out on my bike really badly once; I went home and Mom took me to the doctor and dentist to patch me up. These days someone would have filmed it and stuck it up on Youtube with a funny audio track. I said stupid things growing up, but only my friends knew about it- they weren't blogged all over creation.
Luckily, it's an intelligence amplifier too- you do something really great and a million people hear about it, not just 4-5. Too bad there's so little of the latter. (Or perhaps it is good- I think I'll go browse FARK for more utter stupidity stories now...)
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
Amen.
My point is that people are willing to give up their privacy online because they are used to doing so in "real life." Talking to strangers, telling people your name, letting people see what you look like are all part of being social. Not everyone understands why this should be different online, especially since the opportunities to be social online are often more abundant. Are there dangers from this? Of course there are. Are they different and new (and OMG SCARY!) compared to the dangers of being social offline? Yes, but that doesn't mean they are worse. It just means that people need a different skillset to deal with the dangers.
Privacy is important, but so is being social. Just because something done voluntarily erodes privacy, it isn't necessarily bad.
When it comes to privacy and accountability, people always demand the former for themselves and the latter for everyone else.
"Society isn't open because there are too many closed minds." ...and the writer of this article is a fine example of a closed mind.
"Then came what some people like to call 'Web 2.0'. On that wave of "let's pretend we've upgraded the Internet, LOL" came the social-networking websites... along with those terrible pages of drivel people like to call 'blogs'. It became cool to talk about mundane things and show other people what had been happening in your life. In essence, all the chat room goers had something to do once again."
"My name is Steve Kerrison. I don't have a FaceBook account, or a MySpace login. I do have a blog, but it's work-related."
Obviously the writer has some very strong negative feelings about "Web 2.0", and so he's painting everything involved with it with the same brush. It's a horrible article which doesn't really say anything except that this guy prefers keeping secrets and believes everyone else should too.
People with closed minds will judge people by their online content (and by their clothes, their hair, their car), and that is unavoidable; everybody judges everybody to some degree. It might be argued that some people could judge people simply because they have online content, regardless of its nature.
This article stresses that we should cater to the close-minded set such as Kerrison, without considering that as time goes on it is the open-minded set who will be taking over. It wasn't too long ago that long hair on a guy could cost him a job opportunity, even for mundane jobs (I faced this in the late 80s/early 90s). Times change, and former long-hairs are doing the hiring now. All those people for whom it is perfectly natural to have blogs and myspace pages today, and who are perfectly comfortable with an elevated level of publicity about their lives, will become the new norm before long; there will be new criteria for what could cost you a job opportunity. Keeping the emphasis on catering to the closed-minded set will only delay this change.
RTFM; please, I beg you.
You are assuming that the information that people are posting is honest. What would have change from the pre-internet days, when people divulged what they wanted you to think about them, versus who they actually were? It happens all the time in ads for new homes and in personal ads, why would it be any different in blogs or postings elsewhere?
Social networking doesn't do anything towards social progress, it just makes people feel protected in spouting their opinions, when in reality it has the opposite effect. If anything social networking hinders social progress, because it eliminates the need for social interaction.
...to take down my site, http://snarfmyssn.com./ Whodathunk, I can't put sensitive personal information on the web anymore?
blah blah blah
That our re-introduction to accountability for socially inappropriate public behavior would be brought to us by MySpace and Google?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
If you are concerned about privacy, by all means, do not use myspace. Privacy is not such a bad thing and Americans do need to be better at observing the TMI rule (Too Much Information)
Agreed. When I was a youngin, people had much more of a "That's NONE of YOUR business!" attitude. And it is high time for the return of that mentality.
When I was younger I did a lot of stupid things that I'm not proud of. But then, I didn't have something like MySpace to chronicle them on. These 13-17 year olds (hell maybe even older) kids don't realize that what they think is important will change and it will change sooner than they think. The 16-year old knocking over mailboxes today, pounding beer bongs, and bragging about it online will looking for work at age 22. As a 22 year old, he would never dream of smacking mailboxes with a ball bat but the sins of his 16 year old self will be held against him if he was foolish enough to parade them in front of the world.
It's bad enough to cringe over 10 year old USENET posts. It's a pity that many of today's youth will be cringing over old stupidities well into old age. Ah well, it is the same as anything else I suppose. The stupid ones will weed themselves out. I wouldn't dream of forbidding young hooligans to chronicle themselves online but I advise them against it.
The only reason that privacy and liberty are seen as being correlated is because in our current governmental structures, there's an imbalance of privacy. But that doesn't necessarily need to exist. If nobody had privacy, and everyone had the tools to see what everyone else was doing (think internet-enabled webcams monitoring police actions) then in essence government action would be checked by the possibility of public outrage. Suppose that everyone had an equal footing: instead of the NSA wiretapping you, all phone conversations, especially all conversations by the power brokers in Washington, could be tapped and listened to by everyone.
...at least, this is the view suggested by David Brin in his book "The Transparent Society"...
It's a world that most people would probably not voluntarily choose to live in, but if one lived in such a world one would be forced to be more open lest one is seen as a hypocrite.
yours,
kbs
While many of the reasons for blogging your existence are baffling to me. Having visited MySpace once several years ago before its growth...wasn't impressed with it at all. On the other hand...did post on one of these high school graduate sites what I thought was a profile which was innocent. What happened was all of the scumbags I didn't want contacting me did by clicking on a "Contact Me" link. While not putting my email address out there for anyone to read...the messages came hot & heavy. After that one experiment in using a social blogging site...I do a google search on my name & any user name I may use that is delivered to me everyday. In addition...I use an free email service in the former Soviet bloc for email. Anyone wants to take the time & trouble to bother me...good luck from the former Soviet bloc.
Gee, he's warning kids that if they post on myspace, then the older generation (parents and future employers) might disapprove. Of course, the kids don't care, and why should they? They don't WANT to live in the same culture as their parents. Personally, I find the myspace culture to be preferable to the older culture. With everybody's flaws exposed on the internet, people will learn to be more tolerant of others' shortcomings, and tiny mistakes and personality quirks will no longer seem scandalous. (For example, do you remember the Howard Dean scream? Why should something like that disqualify somebody from the presidency?) The older generation is just a bunch of stuck-up, blissfully ignorant whiners, who are upset that their children aren't conforming to their expectations.
I think the reason why people throw away their privacy so easily is bcause privacy is a stupid concept anyway. What do you really gain from privacy? People can do what they want without other people knowing? Oh that's a good one - so instead of openly admitting and discussing things we allow silly tabboos to fester while we scurry around trying to hide our sins. We allow true crimes to stay hidden. We hide from ourselves and each other. Hell yes, gimme some of that.
Stop hiding in the shadows. Step into the digital sunlight and shout your secrets to the world. You'll find some criticism but with it you'll also find a lot of people with similar interests, problems, and lives. You'll find friends and lovers. You may even find a good job.
You don't have much choice anyway. We're quickly moving into a society where it's possible that you're being seen, heard, and tracked anywhere, at anytime, by anybody. That is both a curse and a blessing but it's just the way things are going to be. We'll all be better off if we let the skeletons out of our own closet, on our own terms, than if we try to fight and let someone else expose us.
Ready or not, you're no longer alone - ever.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Quite frankly, as someone doing hiring in the ICT field, I would say that having zero online presence is way worse than having some politically incorrect stuff pop up with your name. We all do dumb things at various points in our lives and having a crazy video clip or a weird opinion or two online under your name is not a big deal.
However, if a person has *no* online presence at all, I get somehow suspicious. Either the person is paranoid (usually not a good thing) or doesn't really know the ICT field's new inventions and tools if he/she is not using them.
For example, having a professional-looking blog / homepage is a definite advantage when applying for a job.
OR society could grow up and take the eventual step of allowing people to express themselves in peace.
Perhaps the problem isn't social networking, but society.
Why do we live in a society where out of touch wealthy individuals hand down the idea of morals through an employer employee relationship. Am I the only one that find this disturbing. That your boss or clients actually shape your own personal ability to express yourself.
Human resources departments should be fined for using peoples sociological differences against them when hiring. They shouldn't even be allowed to do credit checks and drug tests as means for background unless your job has some very specific and realistic requirement that this information directly verifies.
The more we ALLOW employers, schools and others to shape our ability to express ourselves for fear of rejection or job loss the more of a conformist society of inbreds we become.
The problem isn't social network. It's the internet ability to broadcast a persons actions into the public with such effectiveness. I don't need myspace to post a video of some person making an ass of themselves. Myspace is just an easy way to search for this content. Employers may be using it now, but they can use a host of services to get content on people. As the technology increases to data access and truly smart web searches the fact that social network is not the problem will become more apparent.
The problem is that we are allowing employers and other individuals to act as if we are doing something wrong by posting a comical video or a blog of out personal political thoughts.
Will the internet ultimately become a way to limit information and enforce conformity or force anonymity on anyone who wants to share their views.
I think not. The current trend seems more likely to reshape society than it does to be shaped by society. People will embrace more open expression and churches, parents, and employers are just going to have to get used to not judging people on their internet posts or being sued for doing so.
My karma is excellent.
First is that, by and large, there really aren't that many incriminating things that people post on Myspace, unless you count the barely-coherent crap they try to pass off as English, but the fact that they're inarticulate goons would have come out on the application, resume, or interview anyway.
The implication always seems to be that a potential employer could find your Myspace, notice that you have pictures of yourself mooning the camera or blogging about how much weed you smoked, and refuse to hire you and so will everyone else and your entire career is ruined before it even got started.
However, how many people really do this? I've been around Myspace a lot and I just don't see much of this going on. The few brain-dead twahns that think it's a great idea to post photos of themselves doing stupid shit are just displaying lousy judgement -- something that would quickly become apparent to any potential employer even without Myspace, so what's the difference?
Consider also the ages involved here. The complainers are usually middle-aged up-and-outs who barely understand what the internet and web are about anyway. The people they complain about are usually teenagers or young twentysomethings who have a solid grasp on the implications of the digital age.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the Baby Boomer's opinions are only going to be relevent for a few more years. In five or ten years' time most of them will be retired or out of positions of authority, and people my age (mid-late twenties) are going to be running the show. And people my age, well, we just don't care that you had a silly Myspace when you were a teenager, because everyone else did too, including us. If we start picking and choosing our potential underlings based on who had a stupid Myspace page, we're going to have a very dry pool indeed.
In the meantime, before those Boomers get out of the way, it's not like these teenagers are applying for such high-end jobs that anyone actually checks up on them. They fill in an application, interview once -- sometimes on the spot -- and there's a job. Even for entry-level positions in the "real world", which is where they'll be starting, rarely go beyond a cursory examination of an application or resume and a round or two of interviews. Either you're a good fit for the position or you're not.
Yes, I am simplifying the matter a bit, and there are always exceptions here and there to the generalities I am discussing, but this is basically how it is: The only people that care about this and worry about the privacy issues are either:
mirrorshades radio -- darkwave, industrial, futurepop, ebm.
The list of french people on wikipedia is the third most visited page! Who will safeguard us from the new generation that will grow up and know about french people?
Also note the scary interest in the Basic programming language, *shiver*
molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling
Let's suppose we all do an about face and take *all* of our personal information and throw it out for everyone to see. Everyone freely gives out their social, everyone freely tells everyone else their financial information and *every* passenger on an airplane insists on opening up their luggage and showing "security" personnel. Every time you drive by a police office you insist on a breathalizer test and registration check. Every time you run into a government official you hand them a pile of paperwork that includes everything about you.
I wonder what would happen if banks couldn't rely on you to keep your account number secret or your ssn as a secret, or your mother's maiden name or anything. If nothing was a secret, you have to ask the question, why gather any of the information at all?
a) would they make laws against sharing personal information except to government officials?
b) would they make better security systems that didn't rely on you having a secret?
c) would they stop coming to your door to ask questions if you insisted on showing them your family photo album every time they did?
d) if everyone swallowed a GPS tracking device would they try to detain anyone any more? Given that their whereabouts could be identified?
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
What I was calling "B.S." about was your friends ability to reason in a logical fashion; not that he didn't exist. You seem to have a similar problem. Let's try another approach.
"so if anyone tries to use it against them they are effectively immunized."
The point is that it should be obvious that there are limits to being "effectively immunized". If you dispute this, then just post your real name, SSN, etc.. You claim that the dire consequences are not certain. I claim that you haven't a clue about you're speaking of. And are clueless about your cluelessness as well.
So, logically speaking, you can either post the above info, or accept the fact that you were wrong.
But you really strike me as an utter idiot, so I don't expect you to do either. There's a fairly high chance that you'll blather on and not address the issue though.
http://xkcd.com/c137.html
Ignoring, more or less, your pugnacious tone, your argument seems to boil down to the claim that revealing passwords, PINs, etc., or things (such as your SSN) that are effectively used as such, is somehow equivalent to revealing the sort of personal information (sexual orientation, political affiliation, taste in music, and so on and so forth) that people might reveal on MySpace. And further, you somehow assume that anyone who does things that I won't do for you on demand must lack the "ability to reason in a logical fashion" or be "an utter idiot."
I of course beg to differ.
Your first point is clearly nonsense (a claim you can easily disprove by providing links to a few dozen publicly available MySpace pages with SSN's, bank account numbers, PINs, and the like).
On your second point I would claim that anyone who would reveal password-class information to a person like you, on an open web forum or not, would be the utter idiot. On the other hand, I have no qualms about telling you that I'm a fiscally conservative life-long registered Republican who voted a straight Democratic ticket in the last election because I'm tired of seeing our country run into the ground by a pack of clueless morons, no matter which party they ran under. I like classic rock and some modern stuff, but can't stomach more than a little rap or new age. And so on and so forth.
In case you still don't get it, the point of being "effectively immunized" is to not live as if you have any personal secrets that you wouldn't tell your boss / parents / spouse anyway. If you're going to prance about in undergarments that aren't gender appropriate, put up a web site detailing the whys and wherefores, and then if anyone tries to blackmail you by threatening to "out" you say "Oh good! Give them my URL while you're at it; I could use more page hits" and that is pretty much the end of it.
--MarkusQ
Recently there was a manager of a local shop, he'd been shipped in from another part of the country to open a new store in the town where I work. Or I should say, used to work as I just moved onto another job myself.
;)
On his own private MySpace, he described the town as a "shithole". Somehow (mostly because it's one of those towns where everyone knows everyone else offline and online) this myspace entry got passed around and eventually quoted in the local newspaper. He subsequently received death threats from residents, caused a massive public outcry and got sent back to his hometown to be "dealt with internally" (presumably, lost his job.) Even though these were his own personal opinions on his own personal MySpace, those were the consequences.
It wasn't just him hurt - the general public being as stupid as they always are, they chose to harass other employees from the same shop who had nothing to do with his views and didn't necessarily agree.
One could easily argue that said town *is* a shithole, especially given the retarded way that its residents responded to what was a personal opinion on a social networking site that had nothing to do with the person professionally or his company. But in case anyone traces me back too (extremely trivial, I've given my website) - no, I'm not saying that it is
The lesson? I don't know. I guess it would be - lifestyle choices, getting drunk etc really shouldn't be a major problem. Everyone acts stupidly now and again. But think extremely carefully before you openly slag off other people or places online because without the appropriate care it has a good chance of getting back to them and you will suffer the consequences. By all means call the town you work in a shithole, but for goodness sake do it using a screen name on a site where you can't easily be traced back to yourself as an individual. The more sensitive the comment, the more precautions you should put in place.
For the ultimate protection, never ever under any circumstances say anything that you don't want the entire world to hear and misinterpret. Now, that's practically impossible (I try to keep my personal website as close to that as possible though, and just a couple of weeks ago my interviewer commented on my weblog in the interview itself - I knew this was always likely due to the email address I use. It was positive. I got the job.) It's about weighing up the risks and whether you are prepared for the worst case scenario. If fragments of my previous paragraph got quoted (out of context) in the same paper, I'd be looking at similar problems - however given how late I am in posting a comment to this discussion, how few non-nerds bother to read Slashdot let alone the comments etc, I have made that calculated risk. In that worst case scenario, I'm ready to reply to the newspaper and point them to the full comment and make any necessary clarifications.
The bottom line is that it's all about judgement. You should think about how your comment can be taken by different people, what the consequences would be, what the likelihood of that comment being used against you actually *is* and either don't make the comment in the first place or take a *calculated* risk. Not just go spouting anything and everything on the most public site on the internet. Kids are not so good at making those judgements, but then nobody should be having a go at you later in life for something that you wrote when you were 13 anyway. I'm talking about adults here.
This looks like a classic case of the Prisoner's Dilemma in action. To take your gay rights example, if everyone comes out of the closet, then yes, as long as there are enough of them and enough influential people amongst them, then everyone benefits. But if only a few do, then they get the stigma, the discrimination, the misunderstanding and the hatred. So it's understandable that many decided not to sacrifice themselves for the grand principle.
And of whereas gays, lesbians, and bisexuals form an appreciable proportion of the population, things must be even worse for smaller minorities. Idealism is an honourable and praiseworthy quality, but not everyone is willing to lay down their lives for it.
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
Mod parent UP!
I personally always post under my real name or a screen name which is based on my real name. Unfortunately this does have some security implications. Sometimes we may risk our lives for what we say on our blogs, but I do not think that it is a right thing to censor yourself too much, because, after all, you are and must feel like a free individual with no fear of others discriminating against you (and you shouldn't discriminate, either). People must grow up and be more tolerant toward others.
It has always been like this: If you stand out, speak up or just ascend the soapbox (physically) someone might actually notice, and this someone might be your future employer, or know your future employer - or similar. Same thing today on the internet. Sure, it is easier to dig up old 'soapbox events', but at the same time there are so many more of them made by everybody else, so it's getting much harder to find the relevant ones. The net result is always about the same - most people will not be 'found out' in any major way.
;)
Having a unique birth name might seem a disadvantage, but all the blogs I've ever been to uses nicknames and thus nothing is revealed anyway. That is unless you yourself disclose something personal (apart from your opinion of course), but then you're just either stupid or don't care. But the same with reader's comments in newspapers that could be said to be the equivivalent before the internet - you've always had the option of remaining anonymous; you just had to ask for it. As long as the newspaper had your name, they usually happily complied.
What is true though is that we need to educate people about giving out too much personal information. Children are getting there though due to the pedophile threat, but adults need to be aware as well. Don't stop participating, just think about what you reveal about yourself, that's it. Actually just: Use common sense... Too bad common sense isn't all that.. common...
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
Sounds like a personal problem to me.
Both you and I are aware of this, and we will protect ourselves accordingly. Anyone who isn't aware of the potential flaws in the tools they use is simply not protecting themselves by staying informed. Unless Google and MS deliberately mislead people into thinking this isn't going on (which I don't believe they do), I don't consider them to be at fault.
"I would claim that anyone who would reveal password-class information to a person like you, on an open web forum or not, would be the utter idiot."
Ah. So your original thesis was flawed (which was "While the consequences may be as dire as you claim, this is not certain"), and there are indeed certain limits to what one should publish.
You might want to examine the rest of your reasoning. In particular, read Sun Tzu's "Art of War"; specifically the part about knowing your enemy. There's quite a bit of research, and books, on how to manipulate people. Knowing everything about someone, while they know nothing about you, gives you a great advantage if you want it.
So much so, that the fool on the other end doesn't even realize that they are being manipulated if one is skillful. So, yes, please publish everything about yourself. I might find it handy some time.
The "original thesis" as you call it was about revealing personal information (hobbies, interests, etc.) that might be later held against you by an employer, etc. as you would know if you read the article. It had nothing to do with passwords, SSNs, etc., which is a strawman you introduced.
Nice try and farewell.
--MarkusQ
Let them eat cake. And their best friend's genitals while holding a keg cup. Their actions merit the consequences.
Just a quick note. I'm not signing up for this page at this point just to post a message, and have my email and name sent to yet another database. Do I really care about that? Not really. Do I want to spend the time doing it? Not really.
I digress, I use Myspace as not only a social networking tool, but as a way to spread my 'portfolio' as a graphic designer and illustrator. The point is for everyone to see it, not to hide everything. Of course I don't put super-private information on there, people that put pictures of pot leaves, or themselves in half-nude states aren't very bright and in some way, deserve the negative reactions to those things, that is how you learn, by mistakes.
On Myspace, you have the option to have a 'friends only' or a 'public' profile. Mine is public, I get plenty of freelance work from Myspace, not to mention business connections/contacts. I have also re-connected with lost friends, and talk to people that I haven't heard from in years. The point is for them to find you, and you them. I have met and long-term dated many people off of MySpace, intelligent and wonderful people. My current girlfriend is a result of a connection to a real-life friend who I started talking to again and we all met up at a real-life music event. Myspace is a great way to weed out people that you don't want to associate with. If I get a message from someone, open their page, and they have bad taste in music and 'slutty' pictures of themselves, and bad taste in movies and books...that saves me the time in talking to them and finding all this out. This results in quicker decision making, and more time spent talking to people who I would normally associate with.
I would estimate I have at least 400+ people on my list that I know or have met in 'real-life.' Do I talk to them all every day? No. But, lets say I need someone that specializes in screen printing. I have 3-4 contacts on MySpace that I can easily send a message to, and get immediate results, versus going through a phone-book and picking at random, or trying to find out word of mouth which could take weeks. Or, lets say I haven't talked to someone in a while, but want to find a diner that we at at 10 years ago in another city that I liked...boom, immediate results, plus, the small talk that may lead to a re-kindled friendship.
Myspace has many drawbacks, but if you use it to your advantage, the 'privacy' part is just common sense. The benefits have far outweighed the disadvantages for me. And as far as employers, I would hope that an employer would hire me based on my personality displayed on my page, not turn me down. For freelancing, I have a policy of not working with A-holes. As far as 'real' jobs, if an employer saw my page and had a negative reaction...I'm not so sure I would really want to work for them anyhow.
Small side note: one of our local weathermen recently had been in trouble for associating with the other weatherman who was let go for heroin abuse. He was allowed to stay if he displayed 'better judgement.' A few months later, a photo was circulated on MySpace that was of him shaving a 'sensitive area.' As it was more circulated, basically, the Television channel let him go. I believe the picture started with his personal MySpace page. Whose fault was that? The stations? Myspace? No, his lack of common sense.
-eli
www.myspace.com/analogdharma