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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.'
I basically made a facebook account so I could remove tags.
I have no applications installed. Installing ONE removes your opt-out.
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 .
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
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...
Why? Who cares how "hammed" someone got last Wednesday night. Oooh Look at all the pictures. Look at all the losers that I hated in High School. Facebook is for people that want to make High School last forever. I couldn't wait to leave the people I met in High School behind, why go back?
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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.
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.
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.
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.
Because some of us that hated High School just as much as you did in High School actually managed to make friends in college. It's a great way to keep in touch with people. The "People you may know" has found some long lost friends of mine.
Yes you enter the argument of "If they were that good of friends I would still talk to them". Adult life (marriage, kids, family, work) leaves little time sometimes for other stuff. It's nice to catch up even once a month with a friend.
Oh wait. Nevermind, we all just get wasted and show pictures. I don't have any pictures of kids or sports. My mom (!) isn't on facebook. I don't send her messages now and again. Nope. All drunken photos from Last Wednesday.
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.
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 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.
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.
In what way are they likely to 'hit' you?
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.
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?
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 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
"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.
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.
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."
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
A thought I had about this; Whats the difference between a throw away email address that you have used for everything since 1995 and a real identity?
As a potential lottery winner, I totally support tax cuts for the wealthy
Because you can do a little at a time, when you have the time (10 free minutes. Let's see what my college buddy did today)
Because its really not that much work (you make it sound like it takes hours and hours)
Because there is an entire social norm set up around calling people that doesn't necessarily fit into a person's schedule. (why do you think people spend 2 minutes sending a text message that would have taken 20 seconds to call and say). This is doubly true for far-flung friends that you haven't talked to in a while.
Because you can't show someone pictures of your trip to Spain over the phone.
Because reconnecting with lost friends is both fun and difficult. "YAY! I found you. Do we have anything to talk about now, or are we just warm memories from days gone by"
Because of any number of other reasons that make perfect sense to the person doing it. If they don't make sense to you, well, that's completely irrelevant. It's not about you.
I resisted Facebook for a long time. As a high school teacher, my profile is completely private and a religiously de-tag myself on people's albums. I joined it this summer at the urging of a friend, and have really enjoyed being able to reconnect with far-flung friends. It's a poor surrogate for that shared experience that underlays many friendships, but it is better than nothing when someone is several time zones away.
You call that anonymity? You, sir, are mistaken.
If I ever want to find you, I'll just go to the house with no numbers on it, no mailbox out front, and a lawn full of trenches where utility connections used to be, and will keep opening doors until I find the guy with no fingerprints, dyed hair, and a face like Jocelyn Wildenstein sitting next to the burnt-out shell of a computer.
And if you're not home, it means you're probably out killing the neighbor. I'll either wait for you to come home after you're done hiding the body, or I'll go next door and find you there.
Just once I'd like someone to call me 'Sir' without adding 'You're making a scene.'
I believe that lying has socially and ethically acceptable uses and that you're being both selfish and "part of the crowd" by trying to proclaim that it's not.
But by asking why someone has a "need to be connected...at all times" shows that you're missing the point entirely. You could ask the same thing about email, or even plain old landline phones -- Facebook has perfectly valid, practical uses, just like other communications systems. People also use all three three for frivolous things like gossiping with their friends and self-promotion, and all three systems have the ability to interrupt other parts of your life.
So ask yourself why you have a phone and an email account. Why do you need to be connected to everyone and everything at all times? Couldn't you just go see other people in person, or send them a letter. Sure, you'd like emergency services, but a police box on the corner is almost as good, a whole lot cheaper, and very unlikely to interfere with your normal life.
I'll bet a big part of why you have phone and email services is because everyone else does, and it serves as a practical way to quickly exchange information with other people. Just like the people you're insulting for using Facebook
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 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
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
They don't need to track us all. They just need to be able to cast a net to get whatever interests them.
Eg: Suppose I'm a thief and I want to steal a particular kind of car. With most people on facebook being stupid enough to join a 'network' and expose all their profile to everybody in the network, all I have to do is join some networks and search through profiles until I find someone in my area who has a reference to that car in their profile. I can probably also see where they go to school or work and thereby make a pretty good prediction about where and when the car is going to be available for me to grab it. I might even be able to identify their friends to do a little social engineering ... ("Oh I'm a friend of Steven's, do you know when he's going to be back today ...").
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.
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
What are these friends you talk about? I send my mom messages too, but I usually use the dumbwaiter. It's better than walking up the stairs to ask for a snack.
21st Century Renaissance Man
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?
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.
In what way are they likely to 'hit' you?
Tried applying for credit recently, while living at the same address as someone with bad credit history?
Applied for a job, while sharing a name with a convicted criminal who lives near you?
Been pulled over by the police or sent fines for speeding, because someone cloned your car's plates?
These are the sorts of things that are affected when authorities don't check their facts properly and leap to conclusions, and the examples above are only based on information that ought to be private, but often isn't private enough. When the government and data mining companies (I'm looking at you, Google) will basically give out any information about anyone, the results will only get worse.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
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.
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?
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!
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
...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...
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.