Slashdot Mirror
Give Up the Fight For Personal Privacy?
KlaymenDK writes "Over the last decade or so, I have strived to maintain my privacy. I have uninstalled Windows, told my friends 'sorry' when they wanted me to join Facebook, had a fight with my brother when he wanted to move the family email hosting to Gmail, and generally held back on my personal information online. But since, amongst all of my friends, I am the only one doing this, it may well be that my battle is lost already. Worse, I'm really putting myself out of the loop, and it is starting to look like self-flagellation. Indeed, it is a common occurrence that my wife or friends will strike up a conversation based on something from their Facebook 'wall' (whatever that is). Becoming ever more unconnected with my friends, live or online, is ultimately harming my social relations. I am seriously considering throwing in the towel and signing up for Gmail, Facebook, the lot. If 'they' have my soul already, I might as well reap the benefits of this newfangled, privacy-less, AJAX-2.0 world. It doesn't really matter if it was me or my friends selling me out. Or does it? I'd love to hear your thoughts on the matter. How many Windows-eschewing users are not also eschewing the social networking services and all the other 2.0 supersites with their dubious end-user license agreements?"
I'm a Windows-eschewing user who has embraced all things Google...Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar (my wife keeps it up to date, which prevents "You didn't tell me we had plans on Friday!" moments). I also have Facebook, Friendster, and LinkedIn profiles.
It's funny, I went out of my way to keep my social networking site profiles generic (no pictures, no personal info, no personal statements, no likes/dislikes, etc.), and only really used them so that, when friends sent me links saying "Dude, check out this chick I work with" or "Look what this guy we went to high school with us up to now", I could see who they were talking about.
But what I found out is that, if you know people who have profiles, and those people own digital cameras, and you've ever appeared in any of their pictures, there is a chance that your privacy has already gone up in smoke. Facebook as a very irritating feature called "tagging"...Jenny, an avid Facebook user, takes a picture of their friends Bob, Susan and Mike. Jenny then uploads that picture to her Facebook profile and "tags" that picture with the names of all the people in it. If any of those people have Facebook profiles, their names in that tag will link to them. So in this case, this picture would be tagged with Bob, Susan and Mike. Congratulations, your face is now on the web, and has a name attached to it. This tagging feature is optional, but I've found that it seems to be quite popular.
So despite my efforts to keep my image & life details to myself, this has been undermined many times over by Facebook fanatics who have tagged pictures of me, and have added "helpful" details about how the picture was taken at my wife's cousin's wedding, complete with dates & locations.
Your privacy is gone, my friend. You might as well suck it up & try to look at the silver lining: it is sorta fun to make contact with old classmates and to laugh at ex-girlfriends who've really let themselves go.
Just once I'd like someone to call me 'Sir' without adding 'You're making a scene.'
but we must never give up the fight for bald pussy!
I basically made a facebook account so I could remove tags.
I have no applications installed. Installing ONE removes your opt-out.
Dude, you have to get on facebook.
Science-fiction author David Brin got quite a bit of attention here on Slashdot when he began talking some years ago about how one cannot preserve privacy in the modern world, and that what we have to do instead is adapt to people knowing so much about us. See his book The Transparent Society .
One of these days they will get burned.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Get a gmail/facebook etc account but use false info. Get a new account every few months or so. Don't worry about it - it's not real life.
Sticking to your ideals isn't always easy. Sticking to them in hard times demonstrates how important it is.
The compomise is to not give in to everyone, just be selective. I'd much rather trust Google with how useful their stuff becomes when you do trust them than I would trust, say, Microsoft who would request your information (that old registration bit) which will use it exclusively for marketing and later BSA audits.
More Twoson than Cupertino
don't be a coward.
No way I'm giving up. I suggest using aliases and changing (spam) mail addresses every so often, plus obviously getting a dynamic IP. I'm still using a credit card and say yes to pretty much every cell phone or application EULA, but I think these are less likely to hit me in the long run than publicly available and mineable personal information over which I essentially have no control. Web 2.0 sites are great, as long as I can use them pseudonymously (like Wikipedia, or Slashdot). So no way I'm getting on Facebook and the like.
Join their groups, you'll make new friends that have a similar mindset to yourself.
So, instead of going to a bar to discuss things where I can overhear them, you lay it all out on your facebook profile instead, where I can overread them.
So what? Who cares if your likes or dislikes are posted for all to see?
I LIKE JUNO REACTOR AND SEX
See? Was that so hard? Has my life become worse now that you know this? Facebook isn't going to make your life any less private than when your girlfriend talks to her girlfriends about your impotence. Stop being so paranoid. This isn't a new world of TOTAL INFORMATION AWARENESS.
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
I'm not sure what the motivation is here. Either "privacy" is some sort of religious thing for you, in which case giving up Facebook is a small price to pay, or it's a pragmatic matter, in which case you can make a decision about what the pros and cons are for you instead of asking us.
If you're asking whether I personally am impressed by someone bragging about how he refuses to use Facebook or GMail: it impresses me about as much as someone who brags about not having heard of some television show.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
I don't have a telly. My dad will NOT use email.
I post stuff to him. I may have done more and more frequently if he'd had email, but this is in some ways better, because I'm not mailing any old shite to him.
I still listen to friends who talk about the telly: it's partly so they can relive the experience and partly, if there's a bit of a story to it, I get it anyway.
It would be the same with Facebook / AIM / GoogleWhanger. You don't turn off when they talk about it, just listen to them tell the story. It's not as if you're required to have been there. If you'd been elsewhere, you'd still have missed it and they would still have told you.
So just let them talk about what amusing thing was on YouTube or whatever. Listen and imagine what it COULD have looked like and see if you enjoy the thought. Or just enjoy them remembering what it was like.
"Being included" doesn't mean you have to join them. Just that you'll enjoy listening.
Set up your own private web forums that you have privacy control over and get your friends/family to use it. This works like a charm and is basically how I stay in touch with all my friends dispersed all over the place.
You will always be "out" of the loop as you will be signed up to the "wrong" website. Yesterday MySpace (RupertSpace), today Facebook, tommorrow ??.
You will be signing up to a life of chasing the next "IN" thing and worrying about your online profile. Forget about it all. Keep your relationships face-to-face with the people in your life and enjoy life.
I for one DO NOT welcome our personal data hoarding/parsing overlords.
I'm a privacy guy, too, or at least I was until things like Facebook and blogs come around.
Now, instead of trying to keep everything secret, I think it's easier to assume that everything is known. Some things simply have access controls to modify them or see extended information or are otherwise secured by information that assuredly only I know: passphrases (not passwords).
There's also a key element here: I don't do anything illegal and I'm honest with friends and family. One might say, "What happens when you do?" to which I will reply, "Then I guess I'm going to jail like I should." If someone comes to me with beef about something I wrote, then it's up to me to defend my position.
If I want to pass or store information securely, I'll use PGP or other virtually impenetrable encryption with good secret key protection practices, such as keeping them in my head.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
This is a bit over the top. On Facebook, for example, you can restrict practically any information you put into it. Now, Facebook themselves could technically do what they wanted with it, but if you're worried about the information getting out to the internet as a whole, you just go into your preferences and tell it what to make public, friends-only, completely private, or what-have-you, and they'll restrict it as appropriate. Just because most people don't enable this restriction doesn't mean it's not there.
If you're worried about Facebook selling your information to other entities, etc., take a look at Facebook's privacy policy, which states pretty clearly what they will and will not do with your information.
I have a feeling, though, that you've already made your decision and just want to hear from others who feel as you do.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
appropriate to this topic:
cat and girl
More music, fewer hits
For years I swore that I'd never get a cell phone. I held out admirably until about 2003/04 or thereabouts, but I had to succumb. The reason was that everyone else had one, and social etiquette had moved on to the point where it was considered rude not to call in certain situations, not to return a call promptly, and social events were being organised and plans adjusted with such speed that it was all but impossible to be kept in the loop with a landline and payphones alone.
It's similar to how there are people who live in rural or suburban areas who would probably love to be able to live without a car, but a lot of the infrastructure and social norms that would have made that feasible in the past are no longer around.
Society expects you to be able to have personal mobility and instant availability for communication, and it works on the assumption that you do.
Judging by the experience posted, it looks like some people are holding back on the social networking thing and finding it difficult because of peer pressure pushing them into it. Interesting how society forces a body to conform.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Goddammit, we have to remember what matters!
So, you don't want anything posted on places like Facebook, showing a list of your friends along with articles you have written, journal entries, ties to items you have posted about, etc. But, you have no problem with the same on Slashdot?
Four friends listed
A page filled with your posts to submitted articles
Three journal entries
Three fans
I know some people on Facebook that maintain some privacy: one never fills in all the fields or puts in erroneous information, one puts her middle name as her last name and posts an avatar instead of a photo.
Click here or here.
"And the smoke of their torment rises for ever and ever. There is no rest day or night for those who worship the beast and his image, or for anyone who receives the mark of his name." (Rev 14:11)
Add photos that you aren't in and tag them as you.
Then add backstory for them.
This photo was taken at my sister's friend's cousin's lesbian wedding in Monaco. That's me on lead guitar.
Since you cannot always hide information. You can always try to obscure the facts with the fallacies.
You aren't important enough for Facebook/Google/the government/anyone to bother invading your privacy in any meaningful way. Very few people are. The companies that gather huge amounts of data about us want exactly that - huge amounts of data. That's when it becomes useful (and more importantly, valuable). Stuff about any one individual is next to useless. You can splatter your entire life history all over the internet and on the whole noone will care, or even notice (with the obvious exception of your bank details - they are useful to the more nefarious members of society).
So yeah, carry on being a "private citizen" and withhold all your data. The 'man' will have as much on you as they do on me; and I have a Facebook page, MySpace page, and accounts on dozens of forums. Because we are completely unremarkable. The only difference is that I have accepted it. Nay, embraced it!
http://twitter.com/onion2k
You represent the .00001% of society that holds the views of this beloved blog.
I have removed my fingerprints with acid and have had facial reconstruction surgery. I dye my hair. I uninstalled windows and then burned my computer. I cancelled my phone then dug up the phone line on my property. I cancelled all other utilities and dug up the mains on my property. I moved my mailbox and house number to the neighbor's property. I pay the neighbor to act as my mail/home address firewall. I regularly kill my neighbor and take back the money. Inside my exterior house is another tinier house in which I live. Inside that house is another even smaller house in which I actually live. I also never agree to EULAs.
and http://www.mailinator.com/ for everything else.
I think a Slashdot item "Anti-Terrorist Data Mining Doesn't Work Very Well" just a little prior to yours gives a clue how to accomplish both privacy and availability: pollute the noosphere with bad information about yourself and "fraternal twins".
For instance, something I've done for years is to subscribe to magazines, etc. with slightly different versions of my own name. As others have also done, I started by using a different middle initial for different subscriptions. As the namespace became more crowded, I branched out to using dual middle initials and variant spellings of my name and address.
Similarly, sign up for different online services with variants of your name, birthdays off by days or years, etc.
If enough of us do this for long enough, the waters will be hopelessly muddied.
You can still be relatively anonymous online. I say relative because, well it is relative.
Websites I sign up for require usernames, real names etc. I usually hit these with a moniker of some sort that has nothing to do with my true identity.
What's that you say? They require an email address that can be traced to me? Well no they don't. I have a hotmail address that I registered back in 1995 that I still use. Ah the days of Snap being my search engine of choice, I digress. That hotmail account was registered with a valid email account at the time linking me to my true identity, but I have since stopped that account and I'm sure that no ISP retains user data 10+ years. Can I still be traced? I'm sure some hardcore digging could turn up my identity, but as for my MySpace and Facebook, if I don't already know you then you aren't on my friends list. You don't post me messages, I don't circulate those cutesy little, When was your first kiss, questionaires they get deleted. I don't even read them. I don't browse many profiles of people I don't know. So I think in all, I'm relatively unknown as far as online identity presence.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
So, just make up fake information to feed into these sites. That way, you stay connected to those you want to stay connected to, and whatever private information they have is fake. Same concept with spam-dump emails ...
... to have "friends" on Facebook, you insensitive clod.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
For starters - ever since college, while on the Internet I've operated under an alias. As Beef Curtains pointed out, however, it is still possible that people will figure out who you are (and I'm still suffering due to backlash from my wife's side of the family after some foolish venting on my blog).
There came a point where I was sick of depending on "free" services such as Yahoo! and Google, and as a result I established my own Drupal web and Squirrel e-mail server (and I'm getting ready to embed chat into my main website to take care of that little nuisance). So...I've somewhat weened myself off the system.
That being said, I still have accounts on LiveJournal and MySpace (though I am resisting Facebook), I have a Gmail, a Yahoo! Mail and a Hotmail account - and all of this was set up so that I could keep in touch with friends via IM and also as a way to divert spam from my real e-mail account. I've been trying to ween myself off of these "free" services while simultaneously inviting my friends and family to come on board my own equivalent packages with some success, but not as much as I had hoped.
Wish I had a better answer for you, but I'm still trying to figure it out for myself. One of these days I'll probably snap and delete every account on services that I don't own.
Make sure you use an alias tho, that does make a big difference.
I share a lot of your concerns but I think you might be going so far as to be antisocial. If you have nothing to hide, there's no reason to be hidden. Don't be afraid to participate in society.
On the other hand, I do worry about Orwellian tendencies among government and business. E.g., If I buy cigarettes for my friend using my bank card, will my health care be canceled?
I have found a hosts file (http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm) to be very useful in protecting myself from malware and nosey ad tracking stuff.
I have signed up on facebook.com. It's nice to hear from old friends. I don't spend any time there though. I have never once been to twitter.
Its OK to be a member of such things as Facebook as you can directly control/limit what you make available just by not putting it up ther ein the first place.
But would not ever have my personal documents stored on some remote server for example. This is one reason why I for one will never be a customer for this whole "software as a service" model Microsoft et al are chasing.
You say you preserved your privacy by eschewing the variety of hosted/social networking sites that your friends and family use. Have you also eschewed credit cards? Driver's license? All airline travel? Property ownership?
What you identify as the frontier of privacy is just the most visible loss of your privacy, the publicizing of yourself. You already exist in hundreds of government and corporate databases, both your vitals and your histories, in ways that are badly protected. Your only safety is that you're part of a gigantic herd that exists there with you, making your odds of being singled out lower.
This is what Larry Ellison meant when he said "You have no privacy. Get over it." Staying off gmail and facebook and LinkedIn is a hair shirt exercise in futility. That doesn't mean you have no privacy, but that what privacy you have is the privacy of politeness--what you and others choose to discuss (or avoid discussing) in public.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
Well there's at least two other people who don't use facebook, the parent post and the moderator who gave it an insightful.
If you want to protect your privacy, then fine, but do it for some actual reason, not just for the rather nebulous abstract concept of 'privacy' in itself, which is actually fairly meaningless if you think about your interactions with the rest of the world. It is necessary that people know stuff about you in order for you to function as a human being, it only becomes an invasion of your privacy when people are taking stuff you don't want them to and spreading it around for others to see.
The question is phrased in a sort of black/white manner: either you fight tooth-and-nail to maintain maximum privacy, or you give up and sign up for every crazy privacy-eroding service.
The obvious answer is "all things in moderation." I consider myself privacy-conscious. I don't run Windows. I do use Facebook and Gmail. However I use them with privacy in mind. So my Facebook profile has very little information, has privacy options set quite high, and I only accept friend invites from people that I reasonably trust. (So many people seem to get sucked into the "I need my friend count to be higher" game--which invariable means accepting invites from strangers.)
My strategy works, more or less. There are times when friends reveal information about me online I would rather they didn't (e.g. tagging me in photos on Facebook). But you can't completely prevent these kinds of things. In the same way that friends can give out your phone number or gossip about you in real-life, there will be some privacy loss online. The goal should be to keep things private without it becoming a burden to do so.
It sounds like you're taking the privacy thing to far--to the point that it's harder for you to socialize and enjoy life. So loosen your rules a little bit. Remember that every company (the power company, the cable company, your bank, etc.) has tons of privacy-eroding data on you. Online companies will also get some privacy-eroding data. But as long as you keep it within reasonable bounds, then it won't cause a problem.
Remember, privacy isn't really something that has to be maintained for its own sake. Privacy is a means for you to enjoy your life free from bother, and to prevent people harming/taking advantage of you. Calibrate accordingly.
A small loss of privacy is okay if it achieves the greater objective of making you happy.
While it can be cute to "eschew" everything mainstream, really, you're just being contrary. Facebook is cool. It keeps your friends in the know about you and you in the know about your friends. Yeah, you give up "privacy", but any sort of sincere interaction with another person is going to entail that. Whether you're on the cell phone, typing out an email, or shooting the shit in person, you've got to reveal some of yourself. The perfectly private human being is an opaque and lonely one.
And my experience is the opposite. I guess our anecdotes cancel.
The OP should get over it - Facebook became popular partly because it provides very fine grained privacy controls. I blocked photos of me being visible from my profile some time ago - friends can still tag me but there's no way to find those photos except through brute force search, and you have to be friends with my friends to see those photos.
Also, classifying GMail with Facebook is sort of a red herring, I think. Facebook exists to let you publish personal information. GMail does not. If you keep your email in GMail then chances are excellent you'll be the only one to ever read it. There are a handful of engineers at Google who can read peoples mail and they are busy guys. Having your data read by machines really isn't the same.
I don't really see what Windows has to do with losing privacy, it's perfectly possible to maintain privacy on a Windows based system. For all the stories about how insecure Windows is it's not some privacy risk unless you allow it to be one. No amount of Windows flaws will force you to enter your most personal details, and there's no reason your system need be rootable if you use common sense and don't run things you shouldn't, this may or may not include things such as Javascripts depending on your browser and the sites you visit.
When bringing anti-Windows propaganda into it it sounds more like what this person cares about is actually fighting the system, rather than simply privacy and so I think the answer to the question needs to be a question in itself - what are you really trying to achieve? If you want to be different and fight the norm then carry on, you're doing fine as is. If however it's simply privacy you care about then some issues you raise aren't related to privacy so folding on them wont cause you any loss of privacy but will allow you to join in those more mainstream activities you talk about.
I work on the simple principle that if I've entered personal information onto the internet, I can't realistically trust that it's limited to that particular site and must assume that it's in the hands of anybody. I have made the concious decision that I am happy for my name and address to be on the internet, and whilst I don't want it posted left right and centre I do at least accept that if someone wanted it they could likely now get it easy enough. I even accept that having purchased things online my credit card could be available left right and centre too, however I ensure that I am covered should this ever be an issue. Similarly I accept my e-mail address is probably fairly widely distributed, well, one of them because I have a public and a private one, the public one I will use with forums and will never make the assumption it's unknown to anyone, I assume anyone might have it. My private one however I keep limited to a small trusted set of people, I accept that this could leak but I feel it is more unlikely to.
The real question is how much privacy you're trying to maintain, it's possible to enjoy many features of the modern technological world without instantly becoming a victim of identity theft or by giving away your lifes intimate details to any number of secret services around the world. Privacy doesn't have to be a none or all game.
I fail to see what Windows has to do with your mini-rant. As a long-time Linux user, I'll shake my tiny fist along with you and tilt at all the windmills I come across, but how have you given up your privacy by using a certain operating system?
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
Well there's at least two other people who don't use facebook, the parent post and the moderator who gave it an insightful.
You'd think so, but actually the moderator is a regular Facebook user who just didn't know what the word "Insightful" meant.
I personally will never give up the fight. When people begin conversations about something on their 'wall' or 'myspace', I question them on their need to be connected to everyone and everything at all times. Usually I get a 'Dude, everyone's doing it'.
Everyone lies too, don't make it right. My parents raised me to not be part of the crowd. To think above the common accepted norm.
All my friends that have face books or their spaces know I don't want pictures of me posted. They respect my wishes, that's just common courtesy. --Well for people with IQ's over 40 anyway.
Lastly, HANG UP THE FUCKIN PHONE AND DRIVE!!..
You won't give close friends the ability to post on your wall, yet you have no problem letting the whole world know that you were listening to elvis 2 hours ago?
Back to grandma's basement you!
All of this can go two ways.
In ten years time either all of the "facebook" stuff will be seen as a fad, and joked about as a fad - forgotten and irrelevant. Or it will still be "big" and they will know and capitalise on every single aspect of every single person's private data.
Personally I suspect it will be the former scenario - the "2.0", "social-networking" stuff is just a buzz - a hyper money fuelled fad. The whole thing is an attempt to generate a self-fulfilling prophecy. Facebook worth fifteen billion dollars? Give me a break. The entire bubble has been fuelled on speculative hot air - "if I say it is valuable and the next big thing, then it is". As the stock market has so ably proven over the last few weeks - fads and self-fulfilling prophecies never last.
There was an analogy that was doing the rounds on the "privacy-less age" that we are supposed to be living in. It drew comparisons between the nineteenth century reluctance people had to put money into banks and today's reluctance to protect your private details. We now deposit most of our assets with banks and think nothing of it, the analogy being that in the future the same will be with our private information. Of course like most analogies it is fundamentally flawed to compare the two things - but I couldn't help but smile when, over the last month, I see people questioning to withdraw their money from banks that are on their knees.
If someone wants to find you, or find out about you, they'll keep looking until they've found you. Or until they think they have.
Get a GMail account, a Facebook page and otherwise conduct yourself as the typical clueless user with a wife, 2.1 kids, a dog and a house with a white picket fence. When 'they' go looking for you, that's what they'll find. Then , they'll go away.
Conduct your clandestine activity anonymously, or using some manufactured identities. Leave your cell phone at home and don't drive your own car (or at least switch plates). Bury bodies in someone else's back yard.
Have gnu, will travel.
I came to the conclusion within the last year that privacy is a product of a bygone era. The fact is technology has made it too easy to erode privacy, corporations have made it too profitable, and governments have made it too desired. I read an article that within five years we'll be able to carry enough storage on our person to record every waking second of our lives for a year. It's only a matter of time before people no longer have to blog, they'll just have to live and technology will allow us to record it all as it happens.
Privacy as a concept will not exist for our children's children, if not for our children directly. They'll know the word and the meaning but they won't understand at a deeper level what it is like to go outside and not have to wonder whether or not they're being watched.
The most concerning part of this for myself is and has always been the potential for abuse this has by governments and law enforcement. However now that I've accepted there's no avoiding our future as a surveillance society I've realized the solution. We must make sure that the surviellance and lack of privacy is extended and in fact *led* by government and law enforcement. If governments and law enforcement would be willing to sacrifice their own privacy first it would help (albeit mildly) make the sacrifice of privacy by citizens a little easier to swallow. Also it introduces accountability to the people which is essential. Hopefully the experience of their own loss of privacy will temper their judgment with how to use their ability to invade the privacy of others.
I only hope that within the next ten years we see a strong movement toward transparency and accountability in public officials and public servants. It's the only way to avoid 1984.
Remember the Debian SSH key scandal.
Just give them as little information as possible. I think only your name and email address are required, and any personal info fields you fill out (which are pretty much all optional) can be restricted so they're only visible to your friends.
The wall is a little annoying privacy-wise because anyone you give access to your wall can see what everyone else has posted on your wall. You could still disable your wall and rely on private messaging though.
Essentially, if you keep an empty or locked-down profile, it's like having an entry in the phone book, except you don't have to give out your phone number. Of course, Facebook encourages totally random people you haven't seen in decades to try to "friend" you, so I guess if you'd rather not have any contact at all you might want to stay off Facebook. But otherwise it's not too bad.
I can manage my privacy at the press of a button. Wipe my cookies and become another identity. I can define my privacy as I like.
Deleted
i consider privacy to include my password to my bank account, what my girlfirend looks like naked, and the details of how i lost my virginity, and a few other things
i don't really consider anything that goes on in gmail, in windows, or on facebook to equate to my privacy. who does? this information is mined in order to display ads in a side panel on my pc? ok. and your point?
if you consider that sort of pointless uninteresting minutae of your life to be in the realm of your "privacy" then i and many other people think you are being rather precious and overly dramatic about your life. its really just not that interesting, or worth protecting. most of us have some ability to gauge exactly how absolutely interesting segments of our daily lives and our social circle is, egomaniacs amongst us notwithstanding, and we find it to be rather common and not valuable. precious in total, to ourselves, because it is our lives, but not inherently precious as some sort of vital aspect of humanity. and we know this. and there is no cognitive dissonance about this observation. only within our own personal perspective does this minutiae have value, and in no other persecptive is it even possible to have value. so there is no need to protect anything
take for example a series of snapshots of a trip to disney world. to the person in those snapshots, they are probably more valuable than the mona lisa. but to most everyone else, they are utterly uninteresting. but, and here's the important part: the person in those snapshots KNOWS they are valuable only to him, such that exposure of those pictures to random people he will never know has no context to his life. it cannot hurt him, their reaction. even if he knew someone was looking at his private pictures and was laughing at them: so what? how can that hurt you? how can it wound you? its completely without relevancy to who and what is important to you, so laugh away. the context in which they laugh has no leverage over your personal life, becuase the judgments being made against you are being made within frameworks that have no impact on how you live your life or how you judge your life, or anyone important to you judges your life
this level of security about one's personal life is not bizarre, its normal. i am aware there are probably brittle insecure people out there who instead would be hurt and wounded by this scenario. and? its not like their reaction is valid. its only their distorted sense of what they attach their ego to that gives them pain. yes, they are in pain, but according to any coherent sense of morality, no valid reason can be formulated that justifies their pain. their reaction has no valid real context to their lives, despite their false impression that it does. their own misplaced sense of perspective is the source of their pain, not anything that anyone has impositioned them with an abridgement of their "privacy"
and this is not even something new to the world of the internet. all of us, thorughout all time periods and cultures, have been exposed to judgments about our personal lives by "outsiders". if i go to japan, and i laugh at what japanese people eat, does that hurt the japanese people's feelings? will it change what they eat? is my laughter valid to them in some way? doe sit have any context in their lives? what if a child laughed at my hairdo? or, if i am a teenager, what if an adult tut tutted at my clothing. has my personal space been judged or hurt in any context that is valid and you would take into consideration in changing your personal life?
its not that people are radically unconcerned about their privacy. its that some people consider things to be "private" and worthy of radical defense that most of us view as completely pointless effluvia. go ahead, make fun of it, expose it to the world. its me, its my personality. and?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Don't stop, if no one is doing it ... no one is doing it. We already have enough passive labrat people out there that do everything they're told. Take pride in standing out like I do. It's what I believe is the only right way.
"There's also a key element here: I don't do anything illegal and I'm honest with friends and family. One might say, "What happens when you do?" to which I will reply, "Then I guess I'm going to jail like I should." If someone comes to me with beef about something I wrote, then it's up to me to defend my position."
There is a problem with this position.
You are making the assumption that nothing will happen in the future to make currently acceptable, moral, lawful behavior illegal.
If the law changes in such a way as to be tyrannical and you have allowed no possibility for revolt without getting caught you have sealed your fate long before the tyranny came to pass.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
It's not all or nothing. Live in a cave or put your entire life on facebook. You can keep some of your life private, and still connect with friends and coworkers in social media.
It's all about a little discretion. Just step back 100 years and this conversation is about talking. Do you blurt out everything about yourself to everyone, or take a vow of silence?
They're both a bad answer. Talk some. Set reasonable limits, but don't be a digital hermit. There are going to be bumps, like some of my friends who post their religious and political affiliations may learn, but opening up a little and admitting we disagree about things, but can rationally disagree and still find value in each other is a really good thing. Today, your future boss may look you up and not hire you because you're a rabid McCain or Obama supporter. Hopefully someday soon, they'll just see that your friends think you're a good programmer and not really care about your politics, because hey, everybody has some opinion about politics and it's a plus that you care at all.
I too wish to control my personal details, but I come to think(which I might be wrong about this) that they cant track us all, all of the time. By they I mean anyone wishing to do a large group of people in. I think its a numbers game anymore, if someone or entity wants to find out about you they can, just how difficult it is is another thing ;)
Clever or not, I got nothing...
At some point, you have to find the balance between protecting your personal information and actually being able to interact with other people.
Consider the chance that your life will be somehow ruined by some comment you post on Facebook. It's very low, I think. Now consider how bad you're making life for yourself by refusing to communicate in order to avoid this risk. Is it really worth it?
I, for one, think the benefit I gain from Web 2.0 sites is generally worth the risk.
Short Version: No one is going to pay attention to you unless to invite that attention.
Computers are stupid. The volume of data you're worried about is mind boggling huge. Your google search history is tucked in there with billions on billions of other web requests. If you don't keep cookies between sessions then your thousands of individual search histories are tucked in there with billions of other web requests. This is far too complex for a computer to solve. Someone would have to specifically focus on you to assemble anything useful.
This is the case with just about everything. The volume of data is so large that unless you're doing something to stand out the fact that they have some of your information is meaningless.
If you're doing something to stand out then people will focus on you. That's when things get dicey. Until then you just get lost in the crowd.
Here's what you should ask yourself. Why the fuck would anyone bother with you? I'm not being mean. Seriously who would give a fuck about your web history? Most privacy concerns are simply ego. You're really not as important as you think you are.
You also fail to mention a lot of things. Do you have cable? Do you have your own internet? Do you only use cash? Do you drive on toll roads? The fact that you focus online and not on some of the worse real world things makes worry about you.
If you don't pay for literally _everything_ in cash you're giving away infinitely more intimate information than you'll ever find on facebook.
Do you have a cable box? If so you're entire viewing history ever may be available.
Your entire web history goes through your ISPs servers. Trivial to log. Are you using an encrypted pipe to a proxy? Do you control that proxy? Physically?
if you drive on toll roads there may be a record of all your travels. If you use a transponder to auto pay tolls then there must be.
I find being offended by me offensive.
Decide what you consider "private". I'm not worried about things like my name, address and phone number appearing on FaceBook. I'm in the phone book, anybody who can read and has any interest can find them trivially. Given that, merely having a FaceBook account isn't a privacy problem. What's problematic is the tracking the various FaceBook gadgets can do even when you're not on FaceBook. Some configuration of my browser eliminates that problem (as long as I remember to keep FaceBook in it's own browser session so it can't see anything from my non-FaceBook browsing). Detailed information on my social life? I simply don't post that on FaceBook. I've other places to put that kind of stuff, places that give me more control over who sees it. Photos? That's a decades-old problem, and I deal with it on FaceBook with the same rule I've used since college: if it's something I wouldn't want widely published, I make sure either I get control of all prints and the negatives or I don't allow the photo to include me.
And finally, I keep track of what my friends are doing. If they're in the habit of making things about me public that I've asked them not to, I reconsider just how good of a friend they are. I'm a grown adult, I'm fully capable of making friends with people with a modicum of discretion.
Well, I don't know about Facebook, but Orkut was never any good to my social life. In fact, I had it deleted after a few fights with my wife.
Any life is made up of a single moment, the moment in which a man finds out, once and for all, who he is.
There isn't anything about me I care to broadcast to the world so I don't need a profile on anything or a blog.
The important people in my life I have in my cell phone directory. Anyone who I would want to contact me has my number, anyone who doesn't already isn't that important.
I have gmail and I use it for everything as well as my friends and it is even under my real name. But I use SneakEmail and mailinator for and the sadly crippled bugmenot for websites that require an email confirmation to get in the door.
I finally got my dad to stop forwarding the latest funny thing he found. If only I could keep my idiot friends from using my email on evite or web cards or whatever spam harvester is the flavor of the month....
Decide what is important to you, and if you are "left out" because you don't join the latest fad then chances are you were never "in" to begin with.
By being so different from the masses?
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Advise everyone that wants to email you to use encryption. Fortunately, Thawte (Or xca/openssl for the cheap/lazy bastards) and gmail s/mime plugins for firefox actually make this relatively simple. If I get really bored I'll publish a flash video on this to make it easier for everyone, right now I just go to the homes of my friends and hijack their computers for 5 minutes to set this up.
---- Liquid was a patriot ----
Your options is to join other inline communities, according to you, Facebook seems to be for Windows users. Why not invite your friends and family to join Linux-friendly communities using IE, Firefox and others? Taking a step towards Linux means that you were in some ways a leader, continue your crusade, There are millions of Linux users subscribed to communities.
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I have a facebook. Its just a nickname with a false real name. Very generic and no photo's. It keeps me in the loop with people who insist on using if for everything. It always blows my mind some stuff that gets posted. Both Images and information. People who post real names with real photo's are just ASKING to be burnt. Does your boss really need to know you went out and got drunk and stoned last weekend? Does everyone in your office need to know who you are screwing this week?
My email is with my ISP. You can still email(for now) gmail users.
Any other type of online service i need to use I just put bullshit information in.
Who cares who sees that garbage.
I have to return some videotapes...
I decided quite a while ago that resistance was futile. Most details don't really matter, but it might be prudent to think about what would happen if you ever wanted to run for office or if the political winds shifted further to the right.
As for me, though, this is not a problem, because I love my country and especially that wonderful President of ours. God has truly blessed us to give us such intelligent, caring, and well-groomed leaders. My goal in life is to someday meet one of them so that I can adore him in person.
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
Welly welly welly, usually I'm the first and only one to mention Brin and The Transparent Society.
I'm not entirely convinced, but since I obviously gave up on keeping myself off the Internet long before it even had that name... I don't buy into the contrary argument either.
Dude -
If you feel ever more unconnected with your friends, maybe you should try actual reality instead of virtual reality. If the stuff known as 'technology' is required for your social life, maybe you (and they) don't have much of one already.
The process for leaving Facebook was to delete all your friend connections, remove all your posted pics, remove all your likes/dislikes, and correspond with Customer Support. This was painful. There has since been improvement - it's now a relatively one-click affair.
I left Facebook because their corporate philosophy seems to be that the user allows more exposure of posted information if they do not opt-out. Moving from a school only to school and corporate email acceptance, then to pretty much anyone, then to making "non personal" information available to search engines, each step of greater exposure occurred automatically unless you took action to prevent it.
Do I miss it? Sometimes. But then I go out and hang out with my friends in this city in person, and don't spend hours trying to track down that last person from my class in '98 who's possibly living in Guatemala.
And yeah, I probably end up on Facebook. And yeah, I miss out on some post-even pics. And yeah, I know that, given a bit of time and knowledge of tools, I can be tracked down based on my commonly used handle. But nonetheless, I have taken a stand.
The stand isn't for my own privacy. It's for everyone who gives away their information for convenience, and who doesn't read the changed TOUs, and who doesn't realize what they're exposing until they're denied employment based on pics they were tagged in a couple years before, on an account that, when they stopped using it, was only accessible to the other people in their school.
I gave up on privacy long ago. Now I plan to have such a large and confusing footprint that the bad stuff gets lost in the trivia and I'm leaving lots of trivia around. That and there are at least 35 people named exactly the same as me and the search services confuse us all the time. I look just like a famous Hollywood director/writer and resemble at least one science fiction author to point that I have been confused with them in the past. There is even a very opinionated animal writes lawyer with my name and I get e-mail intended for him occasionally. so hey just so confusion as much as possible and that FBI profile I got in the late um early 1990s won't matter any more at all. I even held a top secret clearance once. so have fun and don't worry about it. Privacy is overrated anyway. I prefer Cole Porter's way of looking at it. I've never been discreet it takes all the fun out of doing bad things. I think I've sewn enough confusion here for now. Good luck re-joining society and sorry to hear bout your separation.
Why bother
then i am the sole determinant of its value
"If I don't care about it, it can't possibly be important!" therefore is 100% accurate when it comes to determining the value of your own personal information
there is no alternative superior or objective arbiter of the value of your personal information other than yourself. it is completely subjective, and it is completely within the realm of the self
but don't mind me, i'm a moron
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Privacy concerns, to me, are a poor primary rationale to do something. For instance, it makes sense to use Google or even Yahoo if you can tolerate a low level of service, especially with the free service. A day or so ago there was a article in the NYT whining about how google does not have customer service for their free mail accounts, and how one might be locked out their account for weeks if something goes wrong. I respond to that by saying how valuable is the email if the service chosen is a free one, even if it is ad supported. Even for $50 bucks a year one cannot expect a high level of service. Therefore I choose not to use google as a primary account due to service concerns, though I do have an account.
I also think that privacy is relative to wider society. We no longer have an expectation of privacy when we hold a conversation in public. We don't have the expectation of phone privacy we used to. Email of course is not all that private, chat lees so. I would sign up for all the chat service since so many people, even business, use them. I see no reason for free mail unless there is a financial reason. Or get friends that don't use this stuff.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Fear not, my man! The Big Brother's plans shall be vanquished!
http://img145.imageshack.us/img145/9118/screenshotnc9.png
Seriously tho, social networking services are pointless hierarchical disconnected worlds designed with single aim in mind: to make money out of the kind of people we in Soviet Russia call 'bydlo' (cattle if you will). In my experience, even the most open and unburdened by rules and agreements kind of social service - an anonymous board - doesn't generally worth spending much time on it. So rather than wasting time for a smalltalk on some social website you better read a book or talk with interesting people IRL.
By being the ONLY one to eschew these things, we have all your information by the process of elimination!
Good job maintaining your privacy. Keep up the fight. Find people who are equally concerned. Use free software instead of cloud services, like yacy instead of Google. Let's get in touch. http://frdcsa.org/~andrewdo
If you are itching for a fight, try telling your friends/family/customers that you will not email them unless they use PGP.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
If you own any property in the US, for the most part it will take about a minute (give or take, depending on how much one knows and how common your name is) to find your address, land line phone number if any, and year of birth. And that's just starting with a name and a state. So if someone wants to find you it won't be very hard anyhow, but YMMV.
Here are a pair of useful links for you bastards.
http://suprbay.org/showthread.php?s=b9e45accf11b495133b2a976ac342acf&t=17750
http://www.partyvan.eu/static/
When they ask for a phone number at the register, when they ask for a zipcode before a purchase, always, always change the answer.
Don't make one profile, mix it up, make a bunch.
Differ the data throughout.
When I die and they look me up in the "Great Database" there will be an infinity of possibilities. Just as good as a blank spot I think.
And be sure to fill out all those paid postage advertisements, they must think my house has all the qualities of the Tardus.
I struggle with the same problem. Some time ago I signed up for a facebook account, but declined to approve the "how we know each other" things my friends posted when they added me as a friend -- that crossed a line. Eventually I caved and approved all of them.
Personal privacy is not something that's terribly important until someone uses it against you. Society has to get used to the fact that the boring guy in accounting may actually attend kinky parties, and that's not a reason to fire him. Loss of privacy enables discrimination, and there must be a counterbalancing force to that. The optimistic side of me thinks that this will make society more tolerant. The other side sees that it will cause harm to a lot of people in the short term.
Police and courts must be enabled to the same information (and there's no reason they can't get that info now...). So when the accountant at the kinky sex party is fired, he can sue for discrimination. I do expect a rash of court cases of this type over the next 10 years. Fortunately they should be easy to win.
But I think the most serious consequence is in politics. Or, areas of life where fact is secondary to appearance. I've never felt terribly concerned about any details about myself...just ask and I'm sure I'd give you way more information than you could find in facebook. But, it's the principle of the matter, and the capability of unscrupulous people to do unscrupulous things. Not necessarily to me... but the capability of (say) one political party to prevent another political party from showing up for a vote by putting their names on a terrorist watch list, or by calling a raid on a party they know they attended because it was on Facebook Calendar. This kind of openness enables your enemies just as it enables your friends, and I don't know how to counter this change. It's clear the US anyway has political parties willing to blatantly lie about each other (e.g. Palin - Obama "palling with terrorists"), it's not that important that they have actual facts they can distort for their lies. Without this kind of openness, they would make things up anyway.
So, transparency of information will cause (a) stronger anti-discrimination laws and (b) difficulty for anyone in politics. This could be the end of functional democracy.
I also think the internet should be making people smarter. I'm still waiting on serious data to back that up...it also seems to give idiots a place to congregate.
So in conclusion, I have no conclusion. Things are changing. I don't know yet whether it's good or bad.
1^2=1; (-1)^2=1; 1^2=(-1)^2; 1=-1; 1=0.
I'm in a similar position as the original poster, although I've made some concessions.
I have a few gmail accounts, a hotpop account or two, none of which use my real name or anything particularly identifiable.
They're tailored for various 'public' functions dating websites, blogs, newsletters, newsgroups, and any number of various opt ins. About 50 % of them 'recycle' accounts, which I periodically ditch to reduce spammage.
I have a personal email address with an isp whose infrastructure I trust for actual personal mail.
I have had a myspace and a facebook under a nom de plume, but due to the inevitable leakage of private information from the friending process, they're pretty rarely used, and I carefully manage the privacy settings, while completely distrusting the ability of facebook (a monument to shitty code imo) to keep anything private.
Call me a curmudgeon, but I gave up on chat when BBS's made it clear that people are mostly jackasses. These same tools behind a TCPIP connection in the '90s via IRC made it even more so. I don't use any IM's/twitter/flavor of the day.
Everyone I actually know and like can get a hold of me in myriad ways, more or less instantly, and google knows nothing at all of me.
That might not seem like much but if you find yourself being tracked by a crazy ex, searched for by an employer, or whatever, you might wish you could get your privacy back.
That's the thing - once you give it up, it's pretty much gone forever.
I consider there to be a difference between "private" and "shut in". I am on Youtube, but I lie my ass off on my Profiles.
I don't run Windows due to security issues, as well as being a Linux fan, and really being opposed to MS in generally, wanting Windows to disappear from this world. I consider the fight for security and privacy to be a different fight than the fight against Windows, even thought they are distantly related. Much like my fight for Secularism against Religion, again, distantly related, but there are some related factors.
Yes you can still share some information (enough to be a social, approachable, kind person) and notbe a total shut in, nor completely open and vulnerable.
Oh yes, Google knows my stuff... It knows what I buy... It knows how I think... It knows who are my friends... It knows that I had a party last friday... It knows where I work... It knows what I'm looking for...
SO WHAT??? You know what they do with that info?? They put a tiny little plain text add on the freaking border of a site, that is TOTALLY relevant to what I was looking for, and actually helps!!
And guess what, they didnt put a gun on my head, I could have just not clicked any ads and kept on reading whatever page I was on...
But Google knows that I was shopping fro flowers last month!! OMGAH! They are soo going to make fun of me right now!!! right? err... no... they dont make money like that.
I would be worried if some friends know what I do online, but I dont care if Google knows... worst thing that can happen? I get an ad that is totally relevant to what I want.
Privacy is overrated... WAY overrated... Not as useful as an email client, not as fun as viewing my sister's party's pictures online, not as practical as getting the best route to whoever I am going using Google Maps.
Come on people, what do you prefer? hang on to your privacy so a Gigantic company that has no personal contact with you whatsoever doesnt know where you are going on a road trip? Or just being able to get there without getting lost, viewing the most beautiful sights and in record time?
I don't use windows and I don't use social networking sites and I am proud of that. Keep up the good work! I think privacy is really underrated
I say just juggle some identities, as a good compromise.
In Facebook, I make sure that everything I put on there is above board. That doesn't stop a buddy posting a photo of me puking my guts out, but that's a risk inherent of Facebook.
For message boards, newsgroups, and purely text-based avenues, I have a few different usernames that I use, and I make sure certain areas of my life never overlap. I think really the only way someone could link my various usernames would be to have a database of all message groups everywhere, do an analysis of the writing styles to develop a language signature, and then match those against all other language signatures in the database. Or, hopefully match odd clues about my identity I might throw out, such as what state I live in, where I went to school, what language I know...
I suppose TIA or the CIA is already working on such a database, but I don't figure I'm really a challenge for them -- I just want to baffle corporate HR people when I'm applying for a job, or the professional "online background" checkers they might hire.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Well it's been clear for a while but I might as well get the pants that come up to my armpits and move further south here in Fla. Because I must be so old that I don't understand this issue at all.
Is not participating in this Facebook thing the equivalent of being a social pariah? GMail? Huh? I've got a half dozen email accounts at least and depending on what I'm doing I use various ones for various things. Things that I don't care about go to the equivalent of a GMail account, I have been using Yahoo Mail myself forever. Other things go to more secure accounts and so on.
I take some basic 'I know a fair amount about computers and the inet' type precautions but that's about it. Because in the end it's the big guys like Equifax that are truly keeping tabs on us. Being paranoid over something like Facebook sounds pretty tin foil hat to me.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
Privacy's a funny thing, people will vote and fight to protect it, but on the other hand they'll practically give it away if you offer them something shiny.
If the other kids put their hands in a fire would you?
How hard is it?
Your private life is yours alone. If you value it, you insist on it being kept private and others should respect that.
Privacy for the sake of privacy alone is a fine thing.
The 'privacy' problem of Facebook is hardly a problem at all. Generally, the people you already know will be looking at your profile and already know where you live and the people you hang around with.
No one makes money off of this information and it's attainable without serious difficulty anyway.
What IS a problem is the fact that the government is able to tap your phone lines, read your email, and look at what books you've checked out of the library.
And then there's cameras on street corners watching you to make sure you're not committing crimes...
Facebook and Gmail aren't even the thin edge of the wedge. No matter what, you don't HAVE to use those services. But there's nothing you can do about the government spying on you.
52 52'23" W 47 32'07" N
I have no bank or other financial service accounts, pay for everything in cash, have no telephone, don't share any information about myself and keep to myself most of the time. When people ask me for any personally-identifying information, I decline to provide it. When a business insists on such information, I simply go to their competition. It's not an easy life but it's damned well private and secure. COTSE helps quite a bit, too. Of course, not having a wife, family or other privacy-stealing bits in my life makes it a little easier.
My name is Ascii and you don't know me.
Think of me when you shave your legs...
privacy isn't about keeping secrets, keeping yourself isolated, but instead about having the power to decide who has access to things you would rather keep "private". very few people keep everything private, in fact most humans, social creatures that we are, need to share otherwise private things with trusted friends and family.
there came a point for me when I realized that the benefits of sharing day to day details of my life with my "friends" outweighed my anxiety over sharing them. to share the types of details that tools like fb allow previously required constant, repetitive physical contact (i.e. being in high school), but online i've strengthened valued social bonds that were very tenuous before due to geography or passage of time (and contrary to popular opinion, you can simply reject those who you would have rejected by not associating with before)
if you have balanced social life you will likely find some use for fb etc, in terms that it increases potential social encounters.
however if you are socially insecure in some way you may
a) become overly dependent of online social tools as a means of reassuring yourself that you are socially relevant
or
b) avoid them all like the plague despite the fact that all your friends are organizing their social lives there (thus reducing your opportunities for social contact and feeding a self fulfilling "bah i'm better than them anyways" attitude)
the main problem with most social web tools is that there is a lack of transparency over how they handle your information on the backend (fb for example, sure you can pretty closely control how your friends see your data, but what about all those annoying apps and fb the company itself? how can i know, in detail, what they're gonna do with my info? heck, it's not even crystal clear who has access to what info wrt applications)
l4h
Sign up wherever you want, just don't use any real information unless it's done in a secure fashion. 'Duncan' is not my real name, and unless there's a legal requirement for me to do so (like online credit card use for purchases) I don't ever use my real name, address, phone number, or anything else, as none of that is anybody's business to know. As for things like Facebook, I really don't blame you, but not so much because of any privacy issues, but for the aesthetics of it: I think sites like Facebook and Myspace are tacky, therefore I don't participate with them. Seriously, I used to be in the same boat you're in, but I just don't have the time to waste writing checks for all my bills or roving from store to brick-and-mortar store looking for things I want to buy, and some of my closest friends have become far-flung across the country and without Livejournal I wouldn't ever hear a peep out of them and vice-versa. You don't have to be a Luddite in order to protect your privacy, you just have to be thoughtful about it.
I think we lost the fight already.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
when the majority of society is obsessed with bad television, losing themselves in liquor, driving unsafely, killing themselves through a pathetic diet, "worshiping" a god that they don't believe exists, over-spending and under-saving, thinking sports teams mean something, complaining about things that they can't fix, complaining about things that they won't fix, and being ignorant of the world because they're too obsessed with where they're going to get their next toy/high/fuck/beer, why should i join them?
why do i hide my privacy? because i would prefer that the losers in the world that fit into the above categories not have any more information about me than i have to give them. i carefully pick the people that i want to know information about me, the extremely small minority that really is intelligent, self-aware, and not incredibly hypocritical.
Especially if you've used the same nick on other sites (I'm assuming so). A quick Googling of your slashdot nick shows that:
- you've made some 3D models of your desk and wine rack.
- you've got a last.fm profile listing Elvis and Chuck Berry as recently listened to
- you're on Openmoko
- you like boardgames
- you may something to do with g-b.dk
- you've posted to linuxquestions.org about bookmarks
- your nick may be a reference to the main character of a game called 'The Neverhood'
Oh, and if you thought privacy was easier before the webbernet, go talk to a skip tracer about how easy it is to find you, even when covering your tracks.
I say stick to your principles! Get new friends and family. It's boring to see the same faces year after year anyway, it's like going to the same websites everyday. But beware! if your principles are weak and the pressure is high, you might eventually yield to these fiends.
Windows is for work, so don't use it for personal information.
Facebook is for douche bags, so don't even bother.
Everything else can be set up under different aliases.
the issue is not that i am telling you that information you consider personal isn't really personal, the issue is that the author of this story is implying that information most everyone considers unimportant is actually in vital need of protection
the author of this story is projecting his odd quirky values onto everyone else: our personal information must be fiercely protected. it doesn't. no one thinks this way
got it, oh great genius? the imposition of values is happening in the reverse direction that you perceive: an artificial inflation of value where there is no inherent value
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Communication is fine. Just never type your personal information into any website.
How many more years will slashdot have an off-by-one error on your Score in your profile?
Just curious.....
Do you have ESP?
Extremist actions do isolate, so how about choosing what you do and don't put online.
I have a photo of myself and my wife taken at our wedding on my facebook account. I've asked my wife not to put photos of our 2 month old on there just yet (let him have some say in what's available to the world when he's older). If a few slip through from a family event I won't be happy but I won't get hysterical. I do have my name and age public but not addresses, phone numbers, what I'm doing that minute, photos of me or my family that would be considered compromising, sensitive political or work related opinions that may mean I don't get employed by someone at a future date.
Most normal sensibe people don't go out into the street naked, but we do still go out in public. In other words we excercise some judgement about what we do and don't make public. The net's not that different really.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
This smells more like a great chance to evangelize the terrible dangers of Windows, since it seems to be his main concern here judging from the fact that he mentioned he doesn't use it twice (we got it the first time).
Funny how I manage to maintain my privacy online no matter what OS I happen to be using. Because you know, it's more likely that you'll get bitten by a break-in at a website that has a lot of your information (OS-agnostic, yay) than some 3v1L h^xxorz surreptitiously penetrating your residential cable connection and making off with your family photos because you failed to put a $30 router in front of your machines or just couldn't bother to patch.
No, it's a lot more fun to blame other people and companies for things that haven't even happened yet. You privacy champion you, with the public-facing last.fm profile.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
I think somebody has to keep the big companies in check by not using their privacy invasive services. by holding out, you're showing them that enough is enough. I think you should, by all means, hold firm. somebody has to do it, and it's not going to be me. their "free" services are just to damned useful. it might as well be you
TIAEAE!
I value privacy, but I have my limits. Am I going to provide my phone number, address, name and social security number for a credit card at a department store for $10 off a purchase? Heck no! I value a mail box void of junk mail and a telephone that only rings when my family or friends call. That way, I spend time on what I want to do.
I consider Gmail to be just as public as a coffee shop. It's conducive to talking with other people, but I'm not about to recite my social security number out loud.
the personal one
the public one
in the personal realm, value is determined independently of anything else. it has no inherent value from a public perspective
the imposition being made is that the author of the story we are commenting under assumes some sort of public value to our personal information, where none exists
that is my comment in a nutshell, and it makes more sense than what the anonymous coward wrote
and you shouldn't be talking about eating dicks on a public website. people might draw embarassing assumptions... yes i am being sarcastic on a meta-level ;-)
(snicker)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I don't have a Facebook or MySpace page, either. I've never seen a compelling reason to set up a Facebook account. I've considered creating a MySpace page, since I am an amateur musician and putting my music on MySpace would probably help me connect with other people with similar musical interests.
However, I've never been able to bring myself to create an account on MySpace. Because MySpace's demographic tends to be about a decade or two younger than me (I'm 37), I just feel like a creepy old geezer every time I even consider creating an account. Maybe I'm being silly, but whatever. At 37, I'm not about to start a new career as a musician, so I'm not that worried about "being found" so I'll just settle for posting a web page about my music on my own web server.
As far as gmail...again, I just host my e-mail on my own server. Any geek worth his salt can configure a mail server and can purchase a domain name -- it's not very hard to do -- and then my e-mail storage is limited only by how many hard disks I install in my server. I can also create "throw-away" accounts that are aliased to my main account, and delete them when I'm done with them, which helps a lot in minimizing spam.
So in a nutshell, I've never seen much of a reason to sign up for most of the social networking sites. It's not about privacy as much as it is about not seeing a need to use them.
Then perhaps it is time to speak with your financial power, instead of just words. This guy seems to be pretty keen on standing up to Big Brother invasions of privacy. http://www.swissbanking.org/en/20080918_5720_refmkpmi_d_tsu.pdf
Obviously your friends are part of a vast government conspiracy to gather information on everyone. Google, facebook and the whole interweb is in on the plot...
You are one of the few remaining water bag left to index and your friends are doing their best to integrate you into the collective.
KlaymenDK... You are not alone... The resistance is small but strong. Join Us! To join the resistance, check out my facebook or e-mail me at theresistance@gmail.com. We're waiting for you!
I hate to use a slashdot meme, and I'm not making the argument that just because something has no apperant real ramifications, it's not a serious issue, but what's so bad about pictures of you being online? You already have your images taken hundreds of times a week, anytime you walk past a bank, into almost any store, whenever you use an ATM.
If you're not famous, the only people who are interested in pictures of you on vacation are people you already know. The one real concern I've seen is if someone posts a picture of you drinking and a prospective employer sees it. That is a concern, and a reason to detag a photo of yourself drinking. Of course, it's an extremely stupid employer who is concerned about that type of thing in the first place, and I maintain that you're better off not working there, but I also realize it's unfortunately not always that simple.
I feel like I'm missing something. Is it more than just the principle of your right to privacy and not looking bad to future employers?
Privacy is an ideal. It's a concept that exists which can't be discounted because of your petty little "insights".
So what if your Grocery Store Discount card shows that you bought some frozen pizzas. So what if the toll road shows that you drive to work. When you do stuff, people can see you. This is not insightful, it is obvious.
The point that you are missing is that privacy is a lifestyle choice that is beneficial. You should maintain your privacy. You should not give out your personal information. And, you should be weary of services that do not protect your privacy. These truths are self evident.
How many more years will slashdot have an off-by-one error on your Score in your profile?
If you want those opinions and photos of you and your current friends to last forever, ok do the facebook thing, Let's just hope whatever you thought of the political system now will be ok to think of in the future.
I'm all for being as obscure as possible, traces of your activity will always be around, unless you are truly paranoid, but you don't have to leave yourself smeared all over the place. If your friends leave you out, well perhaps they are not friends any way.
There will always be trade secrets and penalties for invading anyone's profits.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
I like being anonymous like you..So c'mon lets join this new network 'NoFaceChapter'...;) so that we can keep in touch
I belong to a certain group that, depending on the country I happen to be in, may be subject to prison or death. I won't leave the group nor will I permit any government to have authority over me apart from my consent. Remember - every government that exists is because the governed give consent.
You may not like tax cheats or the very wealthy who store *their* money offshores and away from government regulations. We all have different ideas on things. Those guys believe that the government shouldn't take their money and thus are not giving consent. I no longer think ill of them.
Laws can change and they will and I highly doubt they will be in my favor. I'll eventually be silenced by the government. I figure it is an inevitability.
My online privacy exists as a reflection of what I want others to know. We can shape what others see and thankfully it is easier with these networks.
I have already gone undercover. I was once overt and now I'm covert. My discussions are no longer on message boards or on blogs. I will be able to argue that was the "old" me but I haven't changed. Just the voice, the words and the approach.
I am of course an AC (well known on the Internet thanks to google. I am no longer in the top 4 pages of Google (which took about 3 months of work to clear).
captcha: afraid
I understand your personal preference, but it's worth keeping in mind that Facebook are not immune from data protection rules either. If they are holding personal information about you without your consent, and worse, sharing it with others, then they may well be breaking the law in some jurisdictions.
I almost wish a few people who still value privacy would start filing formal complaints with the appropriate courts/regulatory authorities, so social networking sites get the message that they only get to collect data with people's informed consent. The sort of opt-out policy that Facebook et al. currently take is just an unscalable cop-out. Of course, this would be easier if we had decent privacy and data protection laws, which many countries still don't.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
clearly, withholding information is a losing strategy. so the answer must then be to create so much garbage noise that the signal is indistinguishable! /excuse me while i create 10 extra blogs and post volumes about things not of interest to me //and get 10 new credit cards w/ 10 variations of spelling on my name..
Maybe this is TOO simplistic, but why not just ASK said friends and family to leave out certain personal details?
If they're really friends and family they ought to respect what you want to remain private. And perhaps give them ideas of what info you don't mind being public.
Where this stuff can have very real impact is with people who are "public figures" or stalking victims, etc. For them, privacy and safety are closely related. And unlike some bureaucratic mess-ups, the people looking for these folks are very dedicated and spend hour upon hour teasing out every possible bit of information about their target.
If you're one of those targets and trying to stay out of the way - you quickly discover that the situation is even worse than the tinfoil hat people imagine. Your state and federal government NEED to know who and where you are and various agencies are tasked with collecting that data. The USPS keeps track of names / addresses and sells their lists to just about anyone who asks. Ever wonder how so many area businesses know when you move into a new home? Thank the USPS. You can't receive mail and stay off those lists. And most states use their DMV to keep tabs on their citizens. Same story here regarding lists - some quote fancy privacy policies, but if you want the information you can get it. Of course, you'll need ID or a driver's license so you'll be on their list, too.
Your bank is probably very good at keeping your account details private. But your credit / debit card issuer isn't laboring under any such restriction and once again it's not too difficult to get ahold of someone's credit / debit card records.
And that gets us back to those e-commerce websites. How often have you read their privacy policies? Many of them (I'm looking at you, Yahoo Stores) share their customer's data pretty freely.
So for the need to serve targeted ads and have more personalized marketing we've created a nightmare for some. Search the web for their name (there's more ways to search than Google), purchase their data from one of many web stores that they've probably bought something from, use the card number to access the card records and make note of what stores they buy from. The grocery store, the dry cleaners, the gas station - most of these charges will be within a few miles of the target's home. Now, go for the DMV records for that state and get their address. If the DMV address is out of date, send the target an empty envelope to their prior address and write on it "do not forward, address correction requested". You'll get the envelope back in a few days with one of those helpful yellow stickers on it with your target's current address.
It might cost a few bucks and take a week or two to pin them down - but nobody can hide. Not for long, not very well.
All this data that's being collected isn't much good for the stated purpose (targeted ads, better marketing, etc) but it's very well suited for pinpointing the location of persons of interest. There's so many sources of information and so many of they have lax or no security...
Why make things easier for The Beast is my motto. PGP/GPG encrypt anything really sensitive. Always use encrypted options for logging on to anything sensitive. Go encrypted access whenever possible. Stay off the grid as much as possible. No home phone. Cell phone anonymous, private email not gmail, yahoo, or gorhelpus live.com.
The Beast can learn anything it wants to about you but bulk information economies aren't going to make an effort to look too hard at l'il ole you if you don't pop up on their radar some other way.
What is this privacy you think you'd be giving up?
Why?
Xfce: Lighter than some, heavier than others. Just right.
I have found an excellent compromise on Facebook is to use a fake name. I tell people who I actually want to add me as a friend who I am in Facebook-land, and it works well. The only downside is that it makes it harder for people to find me who I don't already have contact with already but... well, that's not really a downside. And anyone who actually knows me will work out who I am via my other friends or from photos.
No doubt teh Evil Facebook Corporation can still figure out who I am via the interactions I have with other people - but through a fairly simple tactic I've made that a lot harder than simply matching a name to a bunch of data.
Facebook also allows you to 'untag' yourself from other people's photos - the photo itself might remain, but it will not be linked to you in any obvious way.
GMail, similarly, can be used easily enough with a fake name.
Read Pynchon.
If you are familiar with the musician, Momus, then you have probably heard this song. Please excuse my long post, but the lyrics really hit home for me and my friends: Momus - "The Age Of Information" [ from the album "Ping Pong" (1997) ] Lyrics This is a public service announcement Ladies and gentlemen, we are now entering The age of information It's perfectly safe If we all take a few basic precautions May I make some observations? Axiom 1 for the world we've begun: Your reputation used to depend on What you concealed Now it depends on what you reveal The age of secretive mandarins who creep on heels of tact is dead: We are all players now in the great game of fact instead So since you can't keep your cards to your chest I'd suggest you think a few moves ahead As one does when playing a game of chess Axiom 2 to make the world new: Paranoia's simply a word for seeing things as they are Act as you wish to be seen to act Or leave for some other star Somebody is prying through your files, probably Somebody's hand is in your tin of Netscape magic cookies But relax: if you're an interesting person Morally good in your acts You have nothing to fear from facts Axiom 3 for transparency: In the age of information the only way to hide facts Is with interpretations, there is no way to stop the free exchange Of idle speculations In the days before communication privacy meant staying at home Sitting in the dark with the curtains shut unsure whether to answer the phone But these are different times, now the bottom line Is that everyone should prepare to be known Most of your friends will still like you fine X said to Y what A said to B B wrote an E-mail and sent it to me I showed C and C wrote to A: Flaming world war three Cut, paste, forward, copy CC, go with the flow Our ambition should be to love what we finally know Or, if it proves unloveable, simply to go Axiom 4 for this world I adore: Our loyalties should shift in view According to what we know And who we are speaking to Once I was loyal to you, and prepared to be against information Now I am loyal to information, maybe I'm disloyal to you My loyalty becomes more complex and cubist with every new fact I learn It depends who I'm speaking to And who they speak to in turn Axiom 5 for information workers who wish to stay alive: Supply, never withhold, the information requested With total disregard for interests Personal and vested Chinese whispers was an analogue game Where the signal degraded between brain and brain Digital whispers is the same in reverse The word we spread gets better, not worse Better, not worse X said to Y what A said to B B wrote an E-mail and sent it to me I showed C and C wrote to A: Flaming world war three Cut, paste, forward, copy CC, go with the flow Our ambition should be to love what we finally know Or, if it proves unloveable, simply to go
policies ... please, as if they never change
I use most of those services and only as much as I find them useful, which isn't much. It's a real time killer if you really want to engage in socializing online and there are more rewarding things to do in real life. I still protect my privacy, because if at all I only use fake credentials, highly distorted photopgrahs and tounge in cheek profile. Of course this way someone looking for you cannot find you and it isn't useful for online dating, but if you know someone on any of the social networking sites you can just browse their friends of friends of friends list or whatver for people you know and add them yourself. For me it is only a tool to keep in touch beyond email, telephone and Skype so others MMV. Mainly it seems to me you just need to keep out personally identifiable information. This is getting difficult though since your friends will (and may have already) post pictures of you passed out at parties or other situations which certain parties, like your (future) employer, might not appreciate. That is what I am more scared of, information that I do not have control over getting distributed online.
And I also don't appreciate "customer loyalty" cards that actually force you to pay to maintain your privacy by charging you higher prices, banks tracking my purchases with debit and credit cards, etc. etc.
Combined with things like the way stores control the flow of traffic in their stores (forcing you, once you've entered, to walk through the entire store and through several aisles and finally past the cashiers before you can get to an "out" door), and the way fast food restaurants put chains across exits in drive-through line-ups so you don't have the option to change your mind if they're being really slow, I am about ready to snap.
I am sick and tired of being treated like cattle. But I have made a lot of huge concessions because you can't live a normal life if you don't go with the flow. I even have a Facebook account, albeit without any applications.
If you can think of a way- ANY WAY- to force corporations and governments to start treating people like people again, give me a call. I'm sure you can easily dig up my home phone number.
who cares. neither of the bitches running for office are going to do shit about your privacy. the genie is out of the box. the patriot act will be considered mainstream soon enough.
obama is probably going to try to fuck every white girl he gets his hands on and mccain won't remember being elected president come inauguration time because of old age.
I am grateful for the topical ads beside my Gmail messages, they remind me constantly what not to use Gmail for. Gmail is very convenient for 99% of my E-mail. But it's not my ONLY access to E-mail.
You're like a guy "concerned about safety" that is wearing padding and a helmet - to walk down a sidewalk in clear weather. But "risk" - in safety or privacy - is consequence multiplied by probability. You can put whatever number you like on the probability of Gmail or Facebook data being snooped - set it at 100% if you think so. Then multiply by consequence - how hurt or embarrassed you would be. With most things, not so much.
You've decided to keep your clothes on at a nudist resort, and being out-of-step is uncomfortable, so clearly you are feeling a "consequence" of your decision. Obviously, you need to open up on a FEW things (I have a facebook account I barely use and has nothing I don't have on my home page) until the risks are balanced on each side.
PS: I, too, recommend Daniel J. Solove on the "Nothing to Hide" argument - it not only demolishes the argument, but helps you clarify what privacy really means, what it's "for", why we all need it - along the way. Super short version: privacy is just a human need, always has been, every society has it that can afford it. (First thing people get when they can afford one: their own family home. First thing they expend added space on when they can enlarge it: separate bedrooms for kids.) Society must respect privacy so that people can STAND to live so close to everybody else and participate in society at all.
I definitely do not get involved with any blogspot, facebook, etc. As for gmail and the lot, I have given consideration to and have decided to the affirmative that the pros outweigh the cons. It's impossible to hide where one lives, and any possible lan lines that they may have purchased. Even your drivers license number is legal public information. What I've decided is to set up two identities. One, which I do a host of internet activities through, has never seen my real name, address, etc. If someone really wanted to track me down by tracking my IP address, which is connected to an spoofed MAC address, then so be it. Other than that, I have given my real identity only to banks, online development groups, companies for product information, etc. I try and keep my name from any possible spam likely sign ups. I still believe in staying away from facebook, or other large social networks. To me it's absurd. I have the email addresses of those that I would like to stay in contact with, which aren't many. Unfortunately my wife has decided to join in all the groups, and in so doing my name has been posted on everything she does.
One of my friends made an interesting point when I mentioned that I was concerned about my privacy on Facebook, and the general loss of privacy on the web. It's coming to the point where by removing yourself from the "grid" as it were you end up standing out more and more from your other peers. While the rest of us blend in and willingly share our generic details with the likes of Facebook and Google and become just another number in the crowd, and reaping the benefits of the exchange, those who avoid giving up their info and thus avoiding the benefits of the new Web become become the unique and identifiable individuals. Of course, with all this in mind you should still be aware that everything you put on the web is eaten up by the data miners and ad machines and sinister agencies and can all be connected to you so be sure to put up only the right kind of information and use it as a chance to craft your online (and more and more the real) self into the image you want to share.
The unexamined life is not worth living
Most privacy concerns mentioned are red herrings and not worth worrying about. I used to obsess about exactly the sorts of things you mentioned, but eventually let it all hang out. Unless you are posting credit card numbers, social security numbers, or porn, no one really cares. In the end my drive for privacy was largely driven by ego and "I'm special" thinking. Seriously, no one else really cares about you except you. In fact, I've found that I can't even get attention if I want it amongst my close friends and family. I blog, I have a facebook page, I have gmail, etc. and, several years out, I'm basically just as anonymous online as this post right here. Ironically, I was able to do a Google search on your slashdot name (KlaymanDK) and know that you are from Denmark, into 3D modeling, classic board games, etc. And that's just the first page. You already probably have less privacy than you think.
i think the whole thing with privacy online is that every time you fill out an application for a new massage board or anything they ask you for your name, email, state (assuming you live in the united states) and sometimes your phone number (i just punch in a number that is not mine) It is usualy hard to think of a false identity to take your place and even then you need to put in your email for the activation codes so it is very difficult to keep your real identity private online even if you do your banking online you still have all those IP trackers that can find out everything about you even if you use a screen name.
Its not my fault, someone put a wall in my way.
I am currently in Argentina, studying away from all my friends and family, and can say that since I am no longer at my "party school" I have no need or desire to be on facebook. Since there are no parties to go to or drunken adventures to recollect, I simply don't use it now. And what I have found is that I enjoy not being connected to people. Having a break and spending time alone allows you to grow personally and determine what one truly desires in life. Since I have been here (3 months) I have only contacted those few closest to me. When I return will be the time to tell my casual friends and acquaintances how my journey went, which is far more meaningful than 2 sentence wall posts with tagged pictures of myself.
If I am going to talk with someone via the internet, instant messenger is far more useful and meaningful. At least you can converse and send links. Do I even really care how an old high school acquaintance is doing? People spend too much time in the past, instead of concentrating on the present and future. And whatâ€(TM)s sad is I'd say for the majority of my peers (say age 19-24) their hours logged onto facebook sum up to the most time they have ever spent on the internet. WHICH IS A SHAME! The internet is the only place where information is free. I feel I can learn anything from the internet, as long as I apply myself towards my goals long enough. Those who use the internet for adding Lolcat bumper stickers and playing Which Harry Potter House Are You are stick in the rut of meaningless online communication.
Taking a break from social networking has been a true blessing. By concentrating my social interactions with those I make physical daily contact with augments my character as well as my social skills And when I return in 2 months and join the millions of facebookers, at least I can reflect back on my time when my life wasn't controlled by tags and posts.
One man with a gun can control 100 without one
Have no friends.
Saves you money too...
If I am willing to be seen in public with a friend, why would I care if they appear as a "friend" on facebook? Yes, I know, it's searchable. So what. They could get their own facebook page and write on it that they're my friend, and that's searchable too. Or some third party could write on the web that they saw that I am friends with my friend, and then that's searchable. I can't stop people from learning what I do, in a broad sense, so it's not worth my time not to try.
That doesn't mean I don't value my privacy, it's just that I pick and choose what I am private about - and when I want something to be private, I am extraordinarily careful with the information. That means not only not posting it on the internet, but not telling anyone I don't completely trust with it.
I have a facebook page, but there's very little on it because I don't choose to post a lot of information about my private life. I have a livejournal, but I rarely say much about my life, mostly I just use it to share cool links with my friends and read their LJs.
Please elaborate on these "things you shouldn't" post in your profile, or anywhere else for that matter. Would these be things that might become an embarrassment, or things that someone would simply not like or disagree with?
It's a very dark ride.
... you need a face.
That ends up segregating a whole portion of the population and forces acne-ridden dandruff-flakers even further into the cavernous recesses of their own forgotten lives.
Won't somebody think of the social outcasts?
Nice idea, but unfortunately too late. Once you've been tagged "they" (aka facebook and the companies they sell data to) won't forget, even if the information is no longer readily available.
I've given up on the idea that I have ideal privacy. What I do do is salt my trail with false, misleading and often downright contradictory details. If anyone is going to try data mining on me then I figure the least I can do is make their job as difficult as possible: the real me is in there somewhere, but so are a whole heap of lookalikes.
Get yourself a submarine, anchor it underwater in a location with good underwater current flows, connect the propeller to an electric generator (think wind generator but using water instead of wind to rotate the generator) to power your air and water generation units, buy lots of books and live your life the way you want to. The combination of submarine, anchor chain and water make an excellent faraday cage, you won't get many people inside to take your pictures, you can fish for all the food you need so you do not have to use your shopping advantage cards or credit cards that sell your information. Every once in a while have your friends sink a newspaper or two to keep up on current events. You can even create some floppy disks with your Apple II and float them up for your friends to copy and paste (provided they kept their Apple II) your work or ideas so that your privacy can be maintained without a telephone line. Or, just join the rest of the world "no pain no gain" or "if you want to play you need to pay". Just keep a few torpedoes in case someone finds you...
I've been living like this for a long time - about twenty years. I'm forty now. I used to be in the civil service; I no longer am. I was a wicked official. I was rude, and took pleasure in it.
After all, I didn't accept bribes, so I had to reward myself at least with that. (A bad witticism, but I won't cross it out. I wrote it thinking it would come out very witty; but now, seeing for myself that I simply had a vile wish to swagger - I purposely won't cross it out!)
When petitioners would come for information to the desk where I sat - I'd gnash my teeth at them, and felt and inexhaustible delight when I managed to upset someone. I almost always managed.
They were timid people for the most part: petitioners, you know. But among the fops there was one officer I especially could not stand. He simply refused to submit and kept rattling his sabre disgustingly. I was at war with him over that sabre for a year and a half. In the end, I prevailed. He stopped rattling. However, that was still in my youth. But do you know, gentlemen, what was the main point about my wickedness?
The whole thing precisely was, the greatest nastiness precisely lay in my being shamefully conscious every moment, even in moments of the greatest bile, that I was not only not a wicked but was not even an embittered man, that I was simply frightening sparrows in vain, and pleasing myself with it. Such is my custom. And I lied about myself just now when I said I was a wicked official.
I lied out of wickedness. I was simply playing around both with the petitioners and with the officer, but as a matter of fact I was never able to become wicked.
A future employer may care:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/06/20/eveningnews/main1734920.shtml
I'm finding less and less people pay attention to their Facebook. Not just with my tech friends (who reluctantly added themselves to the social cesspool to shut people up in the first place), but with alot of my wife's friends, my clients (traffic is way down on the usage reports), my non-technical friends, etc.
A year or so ago, a new friend request was something exciting, a chance to hook up with an old friend, but after you've been on it a while, you remember why you stopped hanging out with Larry "Loose Cannon" McKraken in high school.
With all the advertising and event spam, I find myself tuning it out completely. Anyone I really want to talk to already has my email or IM and can chat with me anytime.
body massage!
Instead of hiding things just in case the govt. turns into a dictatorship - or something along those lines - perhaps push for more openness in govt. so that the chance of something like that happening is incredibly small.
I am careful to not divulge my email address, or at least not my regular ISP inbox address, unless it is to a friend. I have rules they must follow, which includes NOT including me in any group emails, jokes, etc., unless they put my address in the bcc field. The other option I give them is to send the messages separately and only to me. I am not part of Facebook or any of he social networking sites. If I were, I would not use any personally identifiable information there. I've read of too many things being used to target users for advertising or other purposes, informaiton being shared without permission that wasn't supposed to be shared with others, and other issues on these sites. I use Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo mail, but it's for my less secure accounts. I have very little spam in my ISP email account (about 6 per year) and want to keep it that way. When I sign up for lists and sites I often use the 10 minute email type of web site and remember my username and password since I can't retrieve it at the email I used since it is only a temporary email address. I use a different bank card for online transactions that has a limit to how much money can be accessed at a time. I also subscribe to Life Lock, just in case I have any problems with ID theft. It happened to me once, but I didn't lose any money. The credit card company involved lost a small amount but wised up quickly and put a hold on the account until they verified that it wasn't me trying to use the account. My account address was even changed to one in another state, so I would not have received a bill and might not have known about the problem if I hadn't been expecting a bill, and I could have lost my rights to challenge the charges made to my account. Am I paranoid? Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean everyone's not out to get me. :-)
It's inevitable that you won't have a little of your personal stuff out there, but you can minimize that and keep most of it to yourself. You can take some precautions, too.
Don
Instead of being an asshole, maybe you could take up reading as a hobby?. This isn't exactly unheard of news, but being a hostile and arrogant prick must feel good, eh?
Face it, you will be judged by what's 'out there'; make it part of the noise, or make a louder noise. Or: use the same decision you make with "unsecure email" and decide "would I want this to be stuck on the front lawn on a big sign?"
Sorry - no good advice I can give. Just reminding everyone that you don't have to break the law or a future law to end up screwed by this system.
> and (b) difficulty for anyone in politics. This could be the end of functional democracy.
Maybe, just like your optimistic view of discrimination laws and behavior, people will just get a grip and stop expecting their politicians to be anything other than real people.
By way of example: the current Australian Prime Minister's popularity rating increased significantly, during the election campaign, when it was leaked that he had been inebriated at a strip club in the company of some journalists, while on an overseas trip.
It can be argued that democracy is already not particularly functional, but knowing more about our politicians, or what their Facebook pages say about them probably isn't going to have much of an impact, IMO.
-- Andrew
So you aren't pissing away your time a) updating windows, b) scribbling away at facebook c) worrying about passwd swipers hacking away at your g-mail account. Take the time and do something interesting with it. Learn a new skill that can generate some tangible change in your world. Hell, underwater basket weaving has some merits -- exercise, breath control, and you end up with baskets for Christmas presents.
well, yes, i do pay in cash (except for last year's airline ticket), and i do not use toll roads (since 2002..but i paid in cash), obviously i use that "ole internet", and i used to have cable. my nit-pick is: cameras. just about everywhere i go, there's a security camera or three.....so, i just assume that i am on video while outside of my house. Google Earth's pic of my house has me hanging up clothes on my solar-powered dryer (clothesline) in my Spice Girls T-shirt (really good resolution, too).
I use Google services. I really enjoy the functionality.
I also have a Facebook account. As a college student, and a leader of a school organization, it is all but impossible to stay away from Facebook. I just keep my account as professional as possible. I sometimes post funny links and a few political links. I stray away from uploading many photos and make sure that I remove embarrassing tags from friends' photos.
The conveniences of modern life require a certain loss of privacy, part of the world getting so much smaller is that there's a lot less distance. However, just like the IT guys at your work probably don't read your e-mail, partially due to professional ethics and partially because it's boring, google probably doesn't read your e-mail or look at your documents.
They could, but realistically they probably aren't going to. Unless you have no-script and block google-analytics and never use a google search or go to a site with google-ads on it they probably know an awful lot about you already.
Facebook is another situation, but it can be used appropriately and you can use it while maintaining a reasonable degree of privacy.
Privacy is a continuum not an end point. It isn't just on-line where you lose it, your co-workers can guess at pieces of your personal life based on your appearance and behaviour, even your grocery store clerk could, if they cared enough to remember it, make some pretty good guesses about your life. Every time you interact with another person, that person learns things about you and you lose a little bit of privacy. You can take that with tinfoil hat and go live in the middle of the woods with no interaction with others, but you'd give up an awful lot of stuff to do that.
The internet is the same, you have to make the balance between the realistic cost to your privacy and the benefits you receive by doing something.
Using google applications might be, if they're useful to you, ok. Having a facebook account, if you take the time to make sure you untag any photos that you don't want tagged as you, and if you actually use it, might also be ok.
Living makes your life less private, you've got to work out which bits of it are worth what loss to your privacy.
Personally I don't advertise my business on-line, but I don't hide under the bed either. I don't really want folks peeking through my windows, but I'm not going to live in a house without them just in case someone does.
You can either live a secluded life as a hermit, and live life to its fullest by interacting with others. The cruel truth of it is, if you interact with another human then your "privacy" (in your terms) is gone. All the Gmails and Facebooks have done is move it online and cataloged it. Before the Internet, if you walked outside and met a friend at the park, neighbors could see you, other friends might see you, they could take pictures, tell their friends and family about it, etc.
What difference does it make if those acquaintances that see you or whatnot are living on your street, or linked to you online?
Are you John Connor?
The first think you need to do is stop being paranoid.
First let's look at Google. I don't use Windows where I don't have to (OS X and Linux), but I use Google everything. Guess what? Them knowing your birthday, name, and credit card number doesn't hurt you. They aren't going to sell your info, they simply make money showing ads. The ads are actually LESS annoying if they know more about you. Google Documents, f.e. is very useful, and they don't sell your documents or release them to the world. Likewise, they don't sell access to your Google Calendar appointments. Would I use these services to store all my secret anti-government drug-dealing and assassination information? Probably not. But if you think Google is going to risk damaging their reputation or that your stuff is worth such protection - you are probably being paranoid.
Then there's Facebook and the other sites, where information is purposely made public (or semi-public). They are a little more sketchy than the likes of Google or Apple, but not *that* bad - they don't sell your email to spammers or anything. First of all, if you don't want your profile public... make it private. If your friends tag you in photos - so what? You don't want anyone in the world to know what you look like? so what?
Yeah sure if you're 14 and drinking beer and someone puts your photo online... but then again if you're 14 and drinking beer, you're probably not smart enough to be worrying about online profiles. There is a somewhat legitimate worry about potential employers, etc. finding information on you - But there's an easy solution. Either don't do questionable things, or don't let people record when you do them. So yeah don't let people take pictures of you killing anyone or smoking crack - but that would be true whether there was Facebook like sites or not.
The point is this - only machines read my gmail, my google docs and most other things I want to be private online are reasonably private - and yet sharing is easy as well. The whole *point* of things like Facebook. If you like is so super-top-secret, then don't share it with anyone. Stay at home in your secret hidden spy lair. Otherwise, share what you want, and not what you don't. But don't consider things like normal photos of yourself top secret. Anyone can look that up from your high-school yearbook, etc.
This is the right approach, but not nearly elaborate enough. You must create multiple online personalities. Use them for different things, give them different personalities -- which leads to different screen names, passwords, addresses and phone numbers, etc.
This is not difficult to do, and kinda fun. For example, there are a number of online phone number services -- wouldn't part of you like to have a Las Vegas phone number?
Anyway, it's always a good idea to have a couple bank accounts -- get one that lets you create single-use credit card transaction numbers. Go from there.
Just try to not cross-contaminate your IDs (transferring funds from one to the other, calling on the wrong phone line, etc.)
Don't use your personal details on line. The nom-de-plume is a long and honourable tradition. As a consultant it also gives me the freedom to be a little more, ah, technically honest than if I put my business name at the bottom of every email.
My friends and associates know who I am and how to find me (and I'm sure the appropriate three-letter-agencies do too).
But I certainly am not going to make it easy for every {insert-malfeasant-here} on the planet to get info on me. That's for my credit card and insurance companies to do :-(
-- Butlerian Jihad NOW!
I question the use of Gmail. I know, no company is 100% specially if the government is involved, but Google's policy of never ever deleting data and the fact that government probably has it completely backdoored drives me mad.
But don't you think privacy *is* valuable for its own sake? Every body assumes we pee and shit yet we still seek privacy before going to business.
Everybody has things we want to keep private, in fact the most liberating thing about privacy is that you don't have to even think about if you really want to keep something private or not.
If someone were to find my Facebook page they would see a few occasional updates about what I was doing at school. Which projects I was in, a vague thought about sending a project to a convention, and maybe a few insights on those projects. There might be a picture of me on a friends page, and a few notes on my wall saying 'hey, call me, you know my number.' What does any of this do for my privacy? NOTHING! Nothing said there is any news to anyone who cared. Ooh, I talked to someone who goes to school in NH; oh look my sister has a cat. Any of this data would be available to anyone who asked the right questions, and aren't secret to begin with.
If you want to keep secrets, go for it. But staying completely out of the loop isn't required. Segregate your own life, don't put stuff you want to keep secret on Facebook, and don't tell it to someone who will. That's not that difficult. Separate email aliases, even accounts. Don't use the same user name for everything. Don't let your various accounts talk to each other. Then, if you are paranoid enough to think that your ISP might be complicit in helping to identify you, use a different coffee shop for each persona. For me, that's too much effort; and if my ISP wants to profile me they could* do it without me even knowing.
As for ambiguous EULAs, how about reading them? Facebooks agreement wasn't all that unclear. It spells out who gets what data. So does Gmails and other Google systems. They aren't actually that bad. Compared to what the cable or phone company fine print says, they are down right benign.
Could should not be read as tacit consent, it is an acknowledgment of ability only.
The irony is that right now Google is logging every Slashdotter's activity through AdWords and can tell what sex, age, and even career they have just by what you browse. I know of a couple of possible solutions to the problem other than turning off the computer. PrivacyHarbor.com is one I can think of. Does anyone have more to contribute?
The important issue isn't about privacy. It's about the manipulation of information about you by others and the agendas behind that manipulation. Social networking sites weren't created in order to empower their users. They were designed to be an attractive honey pot for the unwashed masses to swarm to in order to maximize page views. This attracting of eyeballs to advertising on these pages has proven to be the answer to the question "how do we make money with the web". The symptomatic problem of this is the great deluge of personal information folks are willing to divulge on these sites and the unintended consequences this ocean of data can create.
Arguments such as "I have nothing to hide" and the equally ridiculous "There's too much information for anyone to notice" are obvious indications of the weak mindset out there that, if left uneducated, will ultimately result in manipulative if not tyrannical behavior directed by the impending global corporacracy.
--
"...One of the concerns that Ms. Snyder's cooperating teacher, Nicole Reinking, expressed to Ms. Snyder throughout the semester was the importance of maintaining a professional working relationship with students and not to become overly familiar with them regarding her personal life. Among other things, Ms. Snyder had been inviting students to log onto her MySpace Web site, and Ms. Reinking counseled her repeatedly to stop doing so."
The issue doesn't seem to be as cut and dry as the slashdot headline, and you might still think she was wronged after knowing the whole story, but I hope you can at least appreciate that it doesn't seem to be all about a stupid picture on the interwebs.
And on your second link, people usually take many things into account when deciding to hire/accept into college/date someone, a lot of them are things that are arguably more unfair (your appearance, your race, your gender, etc.). At least with a social networking profile, you can make more substantive prejudgments on who they want to show themselves to be and what kind of friends they surround themselves with.
People are going to judge you based on many superficial, irrelevant things. At least when i have a profile or online presence, there's a better chance that they might choose to accept me for who I am and the accomplishments I've made, not just what I look like.
End of sentence.
If I have to explain why, you aren't an adult, despite the years you've been alive.
Here is a suggested list of priorities. Please reply and tell me what would be at or near the top of your list.
1. Information that could be used to reach or gain the trust of your (minor) children.
2. Your medical records. Even if you don't have anything serious in them now, anticipate that you might after your next doctor's visit, and start paying attention now.
3. Account numbers and access codes for liquid assets. Use bill-pay where possible rather than printed checks, because those checks don't use your real bank account number. Use credit cards instead of debit cards, because the latter pull money directly from your bank account.
4. The size of your salary, assets, and debts. All of these can be used by con artists to target you.
I think that after these four, it's mostly small stuff. What do you think?
Is that you?
http://www.zombieapocalypse.tv/
indeed, if someone were liberal with their info on facebook, and they pissed off scientology, they would be making it very easy for scientologists to unleash their fascist "fair game" bullshit
so, let me answer your question this way:
any scientologists reading this post, please put me on your enemies list. i will make it every effort of every fibre in my being to defeat you. please find my personal details, please use them against me. i will respond in kind you slimy motherfuckers
why do i say this?
because they are already my enemy. they are already your enemy, you reading this. scientology is the enemy of anyone who values privacy and freedom. fight them now, when they are a large cockroach, or your grandchildren will be fighting them when they are a swarm of locusts. there is no such thing, as someone who values privacy, freedom, liberty, to not be fighting scientology, already
you are defined in this world by your enemies. i relish being the enemy of scientology. i welcome their attention. evil fucking scum. life is too damn short to hide. i would rather die poor and proud knowing i actually fought and stood for something in this short brutal life than die rich and a miserable coward, hating myself for giving into evil. because that is what scientology is: its pretty much the definition of evil if you value liberty freedom and privacy
scientology is the enemy of every moral principle i hold dear. they freely disregard people's liberty and basic freedoms in pursuit of growing their fungus of a money consuming ponzi scheme that calls itself a "religion". do not even begin to compare this virus with any established world religion. by orders of magnitude, in your most fantastic description of the operating procedures of traditional religions, none of them consume lives and doggedly destroy the freedoms of its victims and of its enemies as nastily as scientology does
any nation that respects basic human rights and freedoms will do their utmost to outlaw and shut down this fungal growth called scientology. hurray germany! come to your sense, rest of the western world. this institution is the antithesis of every principle western enlightenment is founded upon. it is your enemy, whether you know it or not
a society that says it stands for tolerance but tolerates intolerant institutions is hollow and has invited their doom. in the name of tolerance, you fight intolerant institutions. scientology, by their repeated and disgusting tactics, has made it immensely clear they have absolutely zero respect for your rights and freedoms and your privacy. it is therefore in the name of tolerance i fight scientology. squash the fucking bug while it is still small, drive it from the face of the earth. scientology must cease to exist in the name of everything i stand for
and i invite everyone here on slashdot reading my words to stand with me, if you stand for ANYTHING in this world
does that answer your question clearly enough?
besides, you are talking about an organization that infiltrated and bought to heel the goddamn irs! any virulent, persistent fungal creature that can make the goddamn irs cry mercy is NOT an enemy that will be put off by your pathetic attempts in keeping your personal life safe by avoiding facebook! this forum, slashdot, this forum that so much of us look for on news in the good fight had to bend to the will of these locusts. you honestly think this is a fight you can avoid in your life? you honestly think this is an enemy any of us can allow to continue? you honestly believe you are not already their enemy in principle if you value privacy, freedom liberty?
if you are a recognized enemy of scientology, god save you. nothing will protect your privacy. in which case, the
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
hi, i quite live on the fence myself,
a half year back i deactivated my facebook, friendster, myspace, ive recently deactivated my gmail, however ive bought stuff from amazon
ive never owned a mobile phone (quite prevalent in asia), did not own a car (until recently, but i plan to get rid of it when i get my foldable bike), ive *stopped going to parties/events since some time back (hence no need to untag photos)
nevertheless i use windows and mac for development and work purposes
dont know why i obstinately live a reclusive life, but i do agree, you can 'join and control' but why would you want to do that anyways?
its all about choice, logical and emotional choices
privacy itself is an illusion
Never give up the good fight.
There are STILL no references to me available on search engines (no, silly, never from the computers -I- use), linkedin, faceplant (er, I mean facebook), etc. I don't show up in peoples' pictures.
Yet I still have a full social life with friends and family.
Then again, most of my friends don't 'exist on the internet' either :/ Funny how that works out, I tend to surround myself with people with similar technical skills/knowledge/background etc.
Never give it up. Never allow yourself to be assimilated. You are not the Borg ;-)
Because the only privacy disadvantage of Gmail is that the data is stored offsite (and even then it can be minimized by using it like the tiny POP3 accounts from way back when - only temporarily storing new mail on it).
On the other hand Gmail's only advantages over any other email address are the advanced interface with chat (and I don't think anyone actually uses the chat feature), good spam filtering and cavernous storage capacity...if you don't need those things you'll do fine with your thermite-rigged encrypted-disk vacuum-wire-networked private email server in your hidden bomb shelter.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
If you get an e-mail from my asking if you like moonlit walks on the beach, please ignore.
Let's ignore the drama queen who posted TFA for a moment, it's obvious he or she doesn't actually care about privacy. But for you real people and non-trolls out there who really wonder what they should do, I have some advice. Do you like your freedom? Yes? In that case your privacy is of the utmost importance. The reasons for this have been discussed here and on other sites countless times, so I won't bore you with that, but focus on the matter at hand. You need privacy. So-called 'friends' want to take it from you. What do you do? Well, sticking up for your ideals isn't easy, but if you can't convince them to care about privacy, dump them. There are lots of better friends out there, and besides, even a little disconnectedness beats having no privacy. Note that in many jurisdictions you can call the cops if people are sharing things about you that you don't want to be public. If you're thinking by yourself 'oh man, that's hard' or worse 'I'm afraid to do that' I can only say to you: grow a bloody spine.
I refuse to use Facebook and Myspace, but I still use Gmail, and Windows(grudgingly). I like GMail for use on my domain, its a familiar interface, and it is functional.
You make it sound like there's this group of random people who go around hunting down pictures of strangers on social networking sites just to laugh at them. That's simply not true. No one cares if they see you in someone else's picture. No one really cares about what you ate for breakfast or how much you hate your boss. No one cares about you and there isn't some silly group of people who go around hunting down pictures of people they don't know just to get their jollies. You're just not important enough in the lives of 99.9999% of the world to warrant this kind of attention.
who accommodate such "drift" are responsible, as much as the ignorant pushers are.
( because the pushers couldn't have got away with their deforming of our world without that accommodation - .. in someone else's "ideal world" that may be bogus an axiom, but evidence is... )
- this assumes that both "cancer" and "abusers" are a given
Therefore it is necessary to both
a) *not give leverage* to abuse, and
b) *actively oppose* the leveraging of leverage, by abuse.
Reminding the human world of what real worth feels like, would be "c)" in this reality.
@harl-- You are right that our best protection is the sheer volume of the data. Heck, I wouldnt be able to get out of the shower everyday if I worried about google maps street view photographic me. But the odds are just way against that so I take the chance.
@snowraver1-- Yup, I too pretty much hated everyone I went to highschool with. You are not alone there. But it was probably because I was such a withdrawn prick to them.
@fiannaFailMan-- when you said "Society expects you to be able to have personal mobility and instant availability for communication, and it works on the assumption that you do." I thought I had an epiphany! Thats so true. I live in the suburbs and work in the (other side) suburbs. If I told my superiors that I just didnt have my own car, I would be "creatively fired" within a week! (forced out or made my job so bad that I would have to quit). I also need a cell phone as people freak at work when they "think" they need you. Held out till 2002 but then it was all over and I got a cell phone. The saving grace is that because I have a cell and its NOT a company-paid phone, I get to get reimbursed monthly at a rate that covers all of my monthly cell plan save $5. Quite a deal for the 3 stupid calls I get a month from confused coworkers. :)
@gstoddart-- so true..thats my policy, dont do stuff in public that could be used against me. Yes I know laws can change but I am talking about the short-term...who would care that I was vomiting in public in 2008 when they pass the anti-vomiting law in 2019? Two words: "Grandfather Clause"
@beef curtains-- Probably the funniest text I have read in 5 years! Thanks for the great humor. Nods to @khasim for the "Thats me on lead guitar." statement that lead to this. hahahahaha
I agree, data burial/haystacking and data sabotage are the most effective ways, although algorithms to filter out the weed may not be underestimated.
This is something that can be promoted to the masses, because it's a natural evolution from inserting bogus data in forms (I earn over $1m, am 99 years old and live on the north pole).
It could be as simple as a Firefox addition that mixes requests with bogus requests, and moreover, with certain requests/bogus requests swapped with other users.
They want data? They get data. Lots of it. Provide enough data and all of it becomes useless, and no information can be obtained.
'Spear Fishing Attacks' - using data mined from social network sites to tailor make phish emails.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/technology/aussie-fraud-boom/2008/10/07/1223145356188.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1
Why can't end user license agreements be turned to advantage? To deter employers (and bill collectors) from viewing social networking pages, employees (or debtors) might post terms of service under which employers (or collectors) agree to scram. This idea should not be taken as legal advice, just something to think about. --Ben http://hack-igations.blogspot.com/2007/11/privacy-advocates-such-as-nyu-professor.html
Benjamin Wright, Dallas, Texas, benjaminwright.us
I was only responding with what I felt was a proper amount of hostility after having been accosted by that social retards submission.
uhg you people make no sense. THERE IS A WORLD THAT EXISTED BEFORE THE WEB! There is "prior art" on bosses and company's scoping out peoples private lives. Do you refuse to give out the phone numbers to contacts when you apply for a job? Or submit to a background check?
Does the internet make snooping easier? Yes and no. Yes, if you let it, I'm sorry your great example of the erosion of privacy is a few kids who were too dumb to watch what was posted and a drunk teacher, but that is hardly isolated to the web. I have a friend who was fired because he came into work smelling of pot. I have another acquaintance who lost her job as a substitute because she was repeatedly spotted at bars getting sauced. Both of these happened without the help of the internet and involve prying into personal lives. Sure bosses browse employees myspace pages, but unless your the kind of dumb ass that posts pictures of your latest fetish party on a public site your arguments lack venom.
I never use my last name on any site, and optionally use my first name.
a new age has begun - an age of freedom! and all will know that we gave our last breath to defend it! the world will know that a few, free men stood against many!
never give up the fight for your privacy! never give up the fight against your personality!
The best way to hide is in plain sight. Open up an account at a UPS store or something and start using it for all your correspondence (esp bills), when it comes time to renew your drivers license or ID, use it instead, slowly build the information away from you.
Happiness does not come from having much, but from being attached to little.
So you can't do anything that may bring attention to you. E.g hide Protestant priests, German Jews, etc.
"By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise, on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing."
Source: Facebook Terms of Use
http://www.facebook.com/terms.php
Gmail and the various Google Apps are useful... Facebook is, by and large, not.
I use Facebook, Gmail and Gcalendar, but..
I never use my own pc, only the one @ work and school.. I don't want my ubuntu mansion infected with bad cookies ;)....
...But privacy temporarily set aside, a good reason NOT to sign up for Facebook is to retain some control over your time
;-)
Most people I know who "do" Facebook (including my wife, as it happens) seem to end up having their lives swallowed up by it. I waste enough time here on Slashdot, I don't need to make it worse...
That this conversation is amongst people who use nicknames instead of their real names. Just hilarious.
Bitter and proud of it.
"Social relations" - is that a new FOSS database? Wow, I need to get out of my Mom's basement more often. --anon. lurker
Those of you who are not too happy about the creeping invasion of our privacy and are moaning about it to friends and the Slashdot crowd, have got it all wrong.
There are few people who can stop it. No one corporation could, even if they wanted to. They have to compete with what the others are doing. Only legislation can stop it. The corporations know that and already lobby their politicians to not restrict their practices. The rest might like to moan, stamp their feet and shake their fists, but the truth is, they can do nothing.
If you truly want to do something about it, forget about trying to convince your friends ( they don't care ). Write, phone or knock on the door of your politician. Encourage others to do the same ( few will, but that goes for any issue, not just this one ). If that doesn't work, then join the political party and get some direct influence. It doesn't take many strong willed intelligent people to change the course of an organisation.
If you don't want to do any of that, and prefer to carry on with your ineffectual whining, then please shut the f*#@ up! because you are wasting your time and mine.
One might think that the "grey man" who blends into the background rarely attracts attention from the predators who may or may not be on the prowl. But by shutting yourself off from the global network when everyone else is online you are no longer grey!
If I may continue my rant on this theme, it's a well known result from percolation theory that no amount of data collection by the government could have prevented 9-11. An identical result is well-known in the oil industry because it tells you how much oil you can get out, eh Mr Bush and family? It was proven to apply to terrorist networks within a couple of months after the attacks, but it hasn't prevented the politicians from "overlooking" this fact and increasing defence spending and data collection worldwide...
Privacy is long gone for everyone other than those who have no connection to the social, financial or online world. It's been gone for a long time.
You can either sacrifice some or all of your privacy or go live alone on a deserted island (probably non-existent) or in an equally inhospitable place.
I eschew windows and all things Google. I use Google search at most, no Facebook or other social site, I avoid pictures with or around people who I know have the social sites. I'll be honest I avoid pictures in general so this wasn't a hard step. My work, my personal papers are mine not Google's or some other schleps.
With the rise of consumer databases, I realized that it was pointless to spurn social networks as anyone with pocket change can buy more information from any of these firms than I know about myself.
Sure. You can have privacy from the casual websearching douche, but if they don't mind spending tens of dollars, they can know all there is to know.
The game is over, and unless you go all unibomber off the grid and only pay cash, forget about it. You might as well get laid by scenewhores on myspace.
There are still some of us out there. I don't use anything Google if I can avoid it, buy pre-paid credit cards for on-line purchases, use a GNU/Linux distro, etc. I believe protecting your privacy is a losing battle, but I'm going down fighting anyway. I don't want to be part of the problem, even if it appears there's no solution to be part of. As baseball manager Billy Martin once said "Any coward can fight when he's sure of winning. Give me the guy with the pluck to fight when he's sure of losing.." Sometimes you need to fight the good fight just so you can look yourself in the mirror every day.
Firstly, topics dealing with friendship (let alone those that do involve females), especially in the "Real World" (wherever that is) is generally a no-go around ./ ./. ./ can learn from Google is to keep new functionality beta until it's freaking well ready (fix the dupes in Tags(beta!)) ^_^
---
Good advice is one of those insults that ought to be forgiven.
Secondly, if you're failing to maintain your friendships offline, or make new once, this may be a sign of security related issues, but unlike those you might know from computer science, so I've no idea why you're seeking for help on
And if you haven't read a single discussion here, while hiding away from the Internet - you won't get it.
And one thing
You can obviously find people with similar interests more easily by searching a database. That of course assumes they put their interests in a database, and by searching you've leaked some info too. That said you can still attend events with people who have similar interests. Friends won't come to you dude!
-- Programming with boost is like building a house with lego. It's a cool but I wouldn't want to live in it
I agree with you in principal on the privacy issues, but admittedly, I've gone the other way in a couple of ways. Let's get the Facebook thing out of the way: I have an active account that I set up out of curiosity. I'm a developer and wanted to at least see some things they were doing on the site. As it turns out, the only people who have "friended" me (the ex-English teacher in me is cringing) are one sister-in-law, my college-student daughter and a group of her friends. My photo is not too revealing, they don't have a lot of information about me. I generally only visit there when I need to contact my child, or frequently forgets to call her parents. By the way, that very fact that I have a presence on the site seemed to bother my daughter for a while (like I was invading some secret sanctuary), until all her pals "friended" (ugh) me and told her how cool they thought it was that I had an account.
I have two Google mail accounts. One is all personal stuff, and one was established for professional use, back when I was seeking my first contract position. I try not to be too paranoid about just what Google keeps on me in this regard, because if it weren't them, it would be my ISP, or my hosting company or someone else storing my mail. I'm a contractor for the DOD, with a security clearance, so I probably have a better understanding of how to protect myself in email comms than the average bear. But, I also don't worry about it too much; I'm a glass half-full person and I believe that Google makes a reasonable effort to protect the stuff of mine that they do have.
There's one other aspect of this that I keep in mind: having been a sysadmin for a number of years, I know how easily any individual admin working in any IT department could log into any server and poke around in my mail. That's the human element that will always be the single point-of-failure in keeping completely secret. But like a lot of other things over which I have no control (the economy, gas prices, my Jaguars being 2-3), I try to remain vigilant and hope that the best happens. Maybe this is an unreasonable approach for others, but it keeps me from going insane.
Trust me, having worked in some very secure, classified situations, I can tell you that most of the people with whom I have worked are decent folks who value privacy even more strongly than you, and they have little interest in seeing what the average person has in their inbox. The rest of them are too technically inept, ignorant or stupid to do anyone any harm. Trust me on this...
So for me, the convenience of Gmail is the key. I keep all my personal correspondence there, and I can access it anywhere, including my phone, anytime I want. I need to be able to do that. For that reason alone, the other risks are mitigated.
Joe Dougherty, Florida, USA
The words I thought I brought, I left behind. So, never mind.
I am not on Facebook. Nor MySpace. Nor any other "social networking" sites.
But I am on Livejournal - which is where my social circles ended up gravitating to. Most of my friends from the past decade showed up there. We'll start RL conversations based on an LJ post.
Friendship requires channels to be conducted over. My friends chose LJ. Yours chose FB. Do you want to continue to be their friend? Then you kinda need to start hanging out on the same sites as them.
As other comments have pointed out, you're already giving out a ton of information on other sites. Share what you're comfortable with, detag photos you're not happy being listed in. And use it for fragments of conversations.
Keep your email where you want it - but if your entire social circle hangs out on site X, you kinda need to have a presence there.
egypt urnash minimal art.
This debate is missing something huge....and that is that the actual, legal rules that govern privacy are not related to what any of you want or what any of you think you have as far as privacy....it is governed by what the whole of you actually do. And this is why the fellow who suggested folks "start filing suits" is going to be shit outta luck unless more people really start caring about the information they put out into the world and who has access to their information, even when they are not putting it out there in the world.
People do not, legally, have a right to the privacy they personally, subjectively expect. Instead, each person has a right to what a "reasonable person" (whoever the hell that is) would expect to be private.....and thus comes the problem with social networking.
The case that made this real was the US Supreme Court case Katz v. US...and what it more or less stood for was the idea that if most folks put their shit out in the world where people can hear it, listen to it, even if they are doing so on the down low a little bit...then they aren't treating the information as private, so no one else (government, businesses selling all your personal information, etc) has to treat it as private either. The idea is that the reasonable man will understand he has lost his expectation of privacy in that stuff he put out in the world. Think: What I say at home in my house is private, what I scream on the street is public. Most people feel this way, and so since the reasonable man ACTS (NOT thinks...it doesn't matter what you think, it matters what you put out there for others to see and hear) this way, then things done in a house are private, and the government and business have to treat them that way, or be sued. BUT things done on the street are public....so ANYTHING you put up on the internet is public.
Don't kid yourself...all this crap about private profiles, tags, etc is just you deluding yourself.....there is no such think as a private profile.....legally. Sure less people may see it, but think - hundreds, possibly thousands of people will see your private, untagged profile...if 9 out of 10 people expect folks to know the contents of their facebook, that 10th person has lost his reasonable expectation of privacy too because the reasonable person (ie - most people) has not treated the information as private, and expects people to know it....(and yes, even if only 100 of your closest friends see your private profile, that is still putting it out on the street).
Point of the Whole Deal: if most people treat information as private, then the "reasonable person" expects such and lawsuits CAN be brought to make sure that invasions are punished.
Now, I have talked to one former state FBI head, one former attorney for a state BI (Like your Montana BI or your California BI) and one defense attorney who used to defend large, federal identity theft kind of cases, and I will tell you that NOT ONE of them will use social networking, not one will bank or make purchases on the internet, and each makes huge effort not to put any information out there that they would not want the world to know.
That doesn't mean you all should do the same, and it doesn't mean they are paranoid. We, as one group, will determine OURSELVES what we want other people to treat as private and what we want other people, the government, businesses, whoever, to have access to. It is up to us....how we act determines what our "reasonable expectation of privacy" will be. Mr. FBI wants complete privacy in each and every bit of his information......maybe you don't.....it is up to you.
for a blog on this, see: http://whothefucksincharge.com/2008/09/15/doing-it-to-ourselves-part-ii-relinquishing-privacy-via-social-networking/
While it is very difficult to keep any sense of privacy in this world, there are ways to do it. If you make a Facebook Profile, don't add any personal information. Also, you can go into the privacy settings, and set all security to high and only allow friends to see you profile. There is even an option to hide photos of you taken by other people (all this really does is take your name off the pic for all those non friends, but it is something). It is almost impossible to get around in the US today without being watched. Just do what you can to show as little as possible while being watched =)
Coward!
You explained your reasoning for feeling pressured to get a facebook account. But why are you so pressured to switch to GMail? Are you not being a good mail administrator? It seems totally random.
Also, I'd say the benefits of having a facebook account make it worth it, and the benefits of having a GMail account over your own mailserver...don't. With facebook there's a huge difference in functionality (being able to interact with friends in a mode of communication they use too), but with GMail, not so much. You can compete with many of GMail's features (like, sends e-mail, receives e-mail, stores e-mail) on your own.
Have you tried lying in all of your personal and contact information? This stuff isn't that hard.
Plus, if you join you can block searches for your account information.
I asked that question -- in a blog post on my wife's blog -- after discovering too many personal details about the family out there on her blog. We'd agreed when she started blogging (she's a neophyte for the most part) that details such as names, locations, ages, where we went on vacation, etc. were not allowed, and she agreed.
Hijacking her blog was actually pretty easy, since I'm her local IT Shop -- I host our email server/web services in-house, and of course, her login falls under my .org AD domain (hate to burst everyone's bubble, but I'm more a Windows expert than *nix, though I can play in both). Not only did I make myself an admin for her blog, I made her a non-admin, so she couldn't undo my post (which, by the way, was my first blog post ever -- I suppose that indicates my stance on blogging and personal privacy pretty well). This had the delicious side effect of her not speaking to me for several days. Several whole days! During that time, I added a poll to her blog ("How jaded had [I] become?" was the question), changed the hideous colors/theme and of course, edited out all the stuff that shouldn't have been there in the first place.
She eventually asked nicely for her blog back (there wasn't really much else she could do), and I gave in -- but only after she conceded her own lack of judgment in naming the kids, where we'd moved to, where we went on vacation, how old I am, and other details that have no business on the Internets.
Moral of the story: People who blog, usually say too much. Unless you can hack their blog, good luck stopping it entirely.
My opinion of the story: People who blog, usually shouldn't.
Discuss amongst yourselves. :)
Let's say... I put a "normal" or "reasonable" amount of information about myself in public spaces on the web. I like to legally download movies and music. Maybe I use Netflix to stream movies. Maybe I have a kid that likes to watch asinine youtube videos, etc. Some company mines my data and sells it. Fine. They send me tons of ads in my email and on most free sites I visit. Fine. I'm only kind of OK with this because I have unlimited (not the Verizion definition) high speed internet access for about $45 a month. What happens if/when ISPs start charging by usage? Then my privacy is of financial importance. Even adblockers and spam filters on my local machine don't spot it before it gets charged to my account. You say, "It couldn't possibly add up to much." $ per unsolicited byte x millions of customers. Look at the rates for 1 Mb of text messaging, something like $1400 and you can be charged for incoming messages. Good friends don't do things like: omg i cnt b leev u rnt on FB! Privacy is not about paranoia or hiding "non normal behavior;" it's about protecting what is yours.
Please explain why other people's inferences have anything to do with my privacy? Don't bother, they don't, and your "point" makes no sense.
After years of resistance, I started using Facebook. No, I don't really need to keep in touch with long-lost friends (such as ones that moved to Kenya) but that's only one aspect of the site.
My issue is that I'm young and mobile. Like many people on slashdot, I'm not particularly outgoing and I'm slow to accumulate friends. Right now I'm using Facebook to get a social toe-hold in a new town. As far as I can tell, old friends and friends-of-friends are the most likely to be receptive and enjoyable. Yes, I can go rock-climbing and go to concerts etc to meet people but it's not as efficient as using my own network and intuition. This requires a strong network and, for me, Facebook is the best.
I don't know how many more times I'll have to relocate in my life, but Facebook takes some of the edge off.
As a legal matter, your "right to" privacy (from the government, from business, from other folks, etc) has almost nothing to do with what you as a person, subjectively, think should be kept private....instead, your legal rights to privacy have everything to do with how most people act.
There is a thing called he "reasonable expectation of privacy" or REOP. How the REOP works is that things a "reasonable person" thinks should be private (from the government, from business, from each other) are....and what a reasonable person thinks is public knowledge is not private, at all.
And for those of you thinking, "well, I am reasonable, and I expect my (insert: credit card number, favorite sexual position, bestest friend in the world, dog's name, home address, job, etc etc) to be private" ... good luck with that, because thinking it should be doesn't make it so, at all.
Your REOP is determined by how a reasonable person would act. In other words, what is private for everyone depends on how each of us ACTS (not thinks, acts). There are a couple of great US Supreme Court cases on this....look up US v. Katz and California v. Greenwood. In the Katz case, a man was talking on the telephone in an old school phone booth and Uncle Sam wanted to hear what he had to say....court said, hey, he is out of doors, yapping about his business in the big, wide, world....no reasonable person who yaps about his business in the big, wide would expects that business to be private...so listen away, uncle sam. On the flip side: if he wanted it to be private, he would have treated it as private and done his yapping at the house.
The Greenwood case said there is no REOP in trash. The idea is that, again, if you put your business out on the street, it is everyone's business (even if you have it in a trash can)...but if you keep it in the house, it is private. Again, it is how each of us acts that matters.
And that is the problem with social networking....and why all of this tagging, private profiles and the like is just such incredible crap.....it does not matter....at all. What matters is...are you putting it out in the world, or are you keeping it at home. If you put it out there, you no longer have any reasonable expectation of privacy in whatever it is. And just because only 50 of your closest friends get to see your private profile doesn't make it private....think: you would be lucky to have 50 people who wanted to hear your phone conversation if you were talking one your cell phone out in public, but that is not private...so there you go.
So what to do? Well, I have an acquaintance who is a former FBIer, an acquaintance who is a former attorney for your local state BI (think: Montana BI, etc) and then an acquaintance who defended folks in federal identity theft cases....not one of them will use social networking, not one of them will bank online, and not one of them will let anything go up on the internet unless they are fine with the whole, entire world knowing it.
That doesn't mean you should do that, but it also does not mean they are paranoid. It means that the government, business, and so on and so forth will only respect our privacy as much as we respect it ourselves. If you put it out there (and I mean think narrow here folks....if it makes it out of your home computer and your ISP gets a hold of it) then your privacy in it is gone forever.
e-mail, however, has some small hope of turning around. Theofel v. Farey-Jones is a case out of the 9th circuit (California) which has been a bit more protective of the privacy of e-mail than we have previously seen, but don't you worry.....the good old uncle sammy is appealing that to the Supreme Court...and the 9th circuit is known as a "liberal" court so........ I think it would be fair to say that we don't have some of the most civil liberty oriented court at present (yes, folks, whether uncle sam gets to read your e-mail, and let businesses read it to has to do with civil liberties).
but then you got the problem with ISPs and off site data...which makes things even worse (think the Greenwood trash case, above)
its a wild an crazy world.
I don't use Windows and I don't use social networking sites. I do have a MySpace page. But there is little info there and I check it about twice a year.
Honestly, the longer I am in IT the less necessary all the technology seems to me. Maybe I'm just getting old. But if I can't have a social life without using the Internet, then I have bigger problems.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
There is a difference between telling friends face to face in a social environment, and publishing things wholesale to be found by complete strangers on the internet.
How many stories about companies, government agencies, etc spying on your profile with negative consequences do you need before you learn to stay away from social networking sites.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Actually, the cell phone comment reminds me of once upon a time when an employer decided that they needed an engineer on call 24/7. While most of us just buckled under, one of my co-workers successfully destroyed 2 phones per on call week for about a month or 2 before they relented and stopped bugging us about stuff that couldn't be dealt with until the next day anyways. Whoops....how could I have left the phone on the drill press while it was in use...my bad :)
I was not allowed to join a closed mailing list for malware researchers due to the fact that I am not googleable. Had I spread my identity all over the net, had a personal homepage that accurately described me and my skills, had spread comments on my thoughts to various topics of my interest under my real name on the net etc. I probably would have been accepted.
Not everybody is easily googled, even if they put a lot of personal information on the net. Suppose, for instance, your name was very common, (e.g. "John Smith"), or was the same as that of a famous or historical person (e.g. "Martin Luther"), or both common and famous (e.g. "James Brown"). A google based only on your name would be useless. The search would need to be crafted with other terms unique to you and not likely to be shared with any namesake or appear anywhere in a page containing a reference to a namesake. That can be remarkably difficult (it is in my case, since I share my name with a notable person).
Of course, if you explicitly give someone your email address and web site address, then they can find your online information. But it may be difficult to find merely through search engines using your name and a few personal details.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Privacy only exists in so far as you can go behind a door and change clothes without people going "EE-ewe, ya bits, man!" or walking in a park having a quiet conversation with somebody as you walk and most people are at least 10 metres away. Privacy is a construct. Do you use a credit card? Your "privacy" went up in smoke when you applied for it. You pay tax, right? Your return was the surrender of your "privacy". These are things we need in to function normally in civil society. We give a little privacy to earn trust. Look at hermits throughout history, they were as much shunned by as shunning society. So what Google and Facebook hold data on me? So does my employer, the Australian Tax Office, my bank, the transport branch of the Infrastructure Department. You can run, but you can't hide. If you want to engage in civil society, you have to risk civil contact. It always was the way, and always will be. Before Facebook, before eMail, there was a thing called "reputation". Anybody could trash that, it's way harder to trash who you are online.
"I hope you like Guinness, Sir. I find it a refreshing substitute for, er... food." Col. Jack O'Neil, SG-1
"If the law is changed to cover past offenses retroactively, all bets are off."
Who's talking about retroactivity?
What I'm saying is this: If you allow a system to be set in place whereby you basically have no privacy, then if any law should come into being that is immoral or unjust you have no recourse but to comply.
Let us suppose, for example, that we live in an era with no privacy as the OP suggests, and that the government is aware of all you do. Then let us suppose a law is passed to make picking your nose punishable by death (not retroactively). Since you already abdicated your privacy, you must comply with the law, or face death. Moreover, since you have already abdicated your privacy, you also have no means to rebel or resist such tyranny.
This is why the idea that "I don't have anything to hide, so the government can search me at any time" is a very slippery slope. Sure, you may not have anything to hide today. But what if you have just cause to have something to hide tomorrow?
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
As an engineer, I tend to always look at problems in their extremes. If it is possible, though unlikely, that a certain condition could result in a catastrophic failure, it is far better to alter the design so that the certain condition cannot happen ever rather than take a chance that it will only happen rarely.
Moreover, in terms of liberty, I tend to favor the views of our founding fathers (United States). For example, they enumerated the right to keep and bear arms in the event, however unlikely, that our government would turn into an oppressive tyranny. Will this scenario eventuate? Is it likely? Who knows. I'm not willing to give up the right to keep and bear arms in the hope that it is not.
We must always be ever-watchful over our liberties. Sometimes slopes are not slippery. But it's safer to assume that they all are.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
I agree fully with this story. I've shunned Windows, Myspace, Facebook and many services in efforts to keep my privacy (hell, I didn't even sign up here). I eventually gave up because all my internet-attention whore friends had spoiled my efforts. I'm amazed that these people are game enough to post their mobile phone numbers, full names and other information on their MySpace pages when it's more than enough for someone to stalk them.
It's a tough call. Newspapers can be worse because they'll pay the segment reporter to spend 4 days making the network with his own connections, then he just publishes it himself, to "manage his product content to increase sales".
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Like this?
http://www.supershadow.com/starwars/supershadow.html
http://www.supershadow.com/starwars/girlfriend3.html
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
oblig. XKCD http://xkcd.com/137/
"Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing." -- Salvador Dali
you give it 90% importance on a gauge of personal value, i give it 10% importance
the value within our personal lives of that value is absolute and unquestionable, since the value is gauged only by you, and only has meaning to you
but if we move to the public sphere, the value of your high school graduation photos takes on a new value. it does not replace your personal valuation, it operates in a different sphere, a different perspective
this is the source of your failure in logic: you are confusing the personal perspective with the public perspective
no one is telling you how you value things are wrong, they are telling you your value does not apply outside your personal realm
this is the failure of the story's author. he assumes a high value for his information in the public sphere. he assumes the valuation he applies to his info in the private sphere is universal. the truth is, the value he places on his personal info is unnaturally high as applied to how other's value the same sort of info in their own lives
and there's nothing wrong with that. he can assume a very high value on his personal info if he wants, this doesn't impact me. he can protect this personal info in a bank vault if he likes. i'm not opposed to that at all
but when he assumes i have the same high value on my personal info, i have to tell him he is wrong
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
If you were at Judy's Birthday Party, and that was a particularly crazy night, Facebook is not violating your privacy because Judy decided to post pictures of you mooning the boss.
I think they are. I find it hard to believe that in your particular example, this would not be almost unanimously agreed. There is a difference between what you did in private in the company of friends, even on a crazy night, and what you consented to letting the rest of the world see. Judy may be the person primarily responsible, but Facebook are an accessory to the act.
I just don't think you can expect that kind of granularity in laws and expect it to work. You'd have to outlaw cameras -- and everybody's phone has a &*^%^& camera.
No, you just have to outlaw the antisocial use of cameras, and trust that most people will behave responsibly and consider how their actions affect their fellow man. All laws are based on this premise. Otherwise we would have to ban industrial machinery, motor transport and kitchen knives, because they can all be misused to cause harm to others. We don't, of course, but we do ban misusing them to cause that harm, and we punish those who do so.
Allowing yourself to be photographed in compromising situations doesn't mean that the people who were also there must have a "gag order" placed upon them for how they use their own photographs.
I'll be sure to tell that to my friend, whose sports team spiked his drink after his first match, put him in a seriously compromising position while he was unable to do anything about it as a consequence of their earlier actions, and then posted the pictures all over Facebook where family and girlfriend could see them. The (now former, unsurprisingly) team-mates concerned had no right to do that, and it caused great distress to the friend concerned and his family and other friends. Are you seriously claiming that it was all his fault, and there was nothing wrong with the actions of the team-mates?
If your friends photographed you "hitting that skull bong" and posted it on the internet, you beef is with them, not Facebook.
There is an argument that technology is neutral and it's how we use it that counts. That's a good argument, up to a point, but there has to be some balance and proportionality involved depending on the dangers inherent in the use of the technology. I personally believe in the right to bear arms commensurate with both self-defence and protecting civil liberties against a malicious government, but I don't support the right for every citizen to own a nuclear weapon big enough to level their entire city. That would be disproportionate, and too many people in the world are screwed up in the head for such a balance to be an acceptable risk. For the same reason, I accept the basic premise of having reasonable legal speed limits for cars, even though I expect that the majority of drivers could exceed many of them by a modest amount in complete safety.
As technology — in particular databases, communications systems and data mining techniques, improves — people who deal with photographs are going to have to reconcile what they think should be their freedoms with the dangers associated with allowing arbitrary use of such equipment to basic societal values like respect for others' privacy and the right to a private life. As I've noted in recent discussions here on Google Street View, the difference is not just in whether you take a photograph of someone in public vs. just see them walking past. There are many other considerations, including how the data you collect is stored, who has access to it, what other data it can be combined with, how searchable it is, how permanent it is, etc.
I expect that there will be a lot of soul-searching and dealing with ethical grey areas in the coming years, as commercial services like Google and huge government databases become increasingly powerful. But priv
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I recommend the article :
'I've Got Nothing to Hide' and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565
... decide what you want to be private. Stuff you want to keep private: don't tell anyone. Secrets spread. I told that to a 5 year old just the other day who was eager to share his bike combination with anyone that would listen.
The key, and this is important, is be consistent. If you don't want people to know you hate person X in the government because it might be used against you in a future job interview, don't mention it to anyone.
If you don't want people to know what you look like, don't leave your house. I'm sorry, but to think that by removing tags or getting mad at someone who takes a picture of you is going to protect your privacy: it won't. If you leave your house, you're giving up your visual identity. Instead, figure out the things that you can protect and don't give away that information (or become a hermit).
I, mr. AC, have a face book account. Guess what? It knows very little about me. I don't tell my facebook account secrets like "Ha! silly me, I forgot to lock the door.". I tell it things that I don't mind shouting from the top of a roof. You too can be intelligent about what you say and what you photocopy when you drink too much. Oh my gosh, oopps... I just realized I mis-remembered my birthday when I created the account.
Slashdot stories and comments are just as problematic as facebook. Comments you post here can, and will, be used against you in geek-court later in life. Learn what that "Post Anonymously" checkbox does and learn how to find it or create it virtually in other sites and you'll be just fine sonny. It's not like you need the Karma. I didn't.
I have no applications installed. Installing ONE removes your opt-out.
What do you mean? Removes opt-out from what?
I don't disagree with you there, but you're not disagreeing with me either, really - if the law becomes tyrannical, how will privacy "rights" still have practical value?
Because if your government becomes tyrannical, but you still have some level of privacy, you can engage in insurrection with the possibility of not getting caught.
If you have already ceded your right to privacy, and then the government becomes tyrannical, you have no chance at successful revolution.
Perhaps we merely disagree on how wide the slippery slope is... If we end up in a totalitarian state which nevertheless claims to offer some kind of privacy, like "we won't put surveillance cameras in bathrooms, but everything else you do will be reported", we're still screwed. No recourse if someone invents evidence against us about our subversive bathroom activities, no appeal if they bribe a judge, no consequences if the local boss' nephew puts a camera in the ladies' room "by mistake", etc.
But you will have the recourse to engage in revolutionary activities with the possibility of not getting caught.
In short: once you're screwed, you're screwed. YES privacy rights are important, but only insofar as rights in general have meaning. Making an argument to defend one right by suggesting that it will become more valuable if all other rights go away does not persuade me.
You are making the assumption that once a tyranny happens you are screwed. So long as the ability to resist is preserved, you are not screwed. This is why, for example, our founders enumerated the right to keep and bear arms in our Constitution. It provides the means for resistance against an oppressive tyranny - even if and after such a tyranny comes to pass.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
How many stories about companies, government agencies, etc spying on your profile with negative consequences do you need before you learn to stay away from social networking sites.
one?
Privacy is really a relative term, there isn't a fool proof way to maintain such a high level of privacy. I get phishing email all the time and the occational spam and I have lost rack of how many on line services accounts I have or even wher half of them are. When a site requires certain information that I think they don't need to know I just fill in bogus information. For instance one's telephone number 9 times out of ten I give them the number to directory assistance 555-1212. If they want an address and I dont particulary think the need it I will give them a bogus address.
If I were you, I'd get new friends. One shouldn't be friends with people who basically put their entire personal lives up for all to see any more than one would want to be friends with someone who repeated everything you said or did to anyone without any respect for how you felt about it. They're bascially the equivalent of the worst possible gossip. And their gossip will *always* end up messing things up for you later on. For examples, just watch any sitcom.