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Anatomy of a Privacy Nightmare
itwbennett writes "Gennette Cordova knows first-hand how impossible it is to erase yourself from the Internet. The 21-year-old college student was the hapless recipient of a photo of a Congressman Anthony Weiner bulging in his boxers. Ms. Cordova then 'watched in sheer disbelief as my name, age, location, links to any social networking site I've ever used, my old phone numbers and pictures have been passed along from stranger to stranger.' She then tried to remove her personal information from the web, one social network at a time. But the fact is, 'until a site's Webmaster removes the offending content, it will remain accessible via search engines like Google,' says blogger Dan Tynan."
It happened to her. Just like one day it could happen to you.
No, it won't. But that's just because I am one boring person and I don't share much online. But hats off to your ridiculous fear mongering. While Gennette Cordova herself wasn't a celebrity or public figure, she worked for one and probably should have been careful about broadcasting that to the world.
I don't care if I work at goddamn McDonalds, I'm not going to associate my employer with anything online. One day I'm going to get done with work, get on twitter/facebook/slashdot and paraphrase Fight Club:
Because one of these days some manatee is going to come into the restaurant demanding his slaw and this button-down, Oxford-cloth psycho might just snap, and then stalk from drive-thru to drive-thru with an Armalite AR-10 carbine gas-powered semi-automatic weapon, pumping round after round into customers and co-workers. This might be someone you've known for years. Someone very, very close to you.
And I'm not going to be fired for venting.
In 1568 if you used a Gutenberg press to print off everything about you and you distributed it by hand to all the other serfs in your kingdom would you be surprised that they know it!? No? You grasp that concept?! Well what is so hard to grasp about putting your freaking life story on the internet only to be shocked when it's fed back to you by everyone on the goddamn planet?! It was true then and it's true now. Keep what you want to remain private as private. What changed after she got the photo that suddenly made her aware that everyone can see her profiles? What changed? Now other people are posting that same information? Because it was publicly available to anyone and any search engine? Ridiculous. Hoisted by her own petard.
My work here is dung.
There is significant evidence that Weinergate was a frame set-up from the beginng. I do feel sorry for this girl, as she is as much a victim of this mess as Rep. Anthony Weiner, but please don't accuse the representative of actually sending the photo directly to her - she was the vehicle of a hack-job, not the target.
It wasn't him. He was set up using a "feature" of Yfrog that leaves a gaping security hole.
I submitted the story from CannonFire yesterday, but it's still pending.
I can see the fnords!
Look, kid, you just got the kind of publicity money can hardly buy. Get on the phone to ICM, get an agent, and pitch a reality show to TLC pronto. You will be able to pay off the college tuition and buy a house for your mom.
You are going to be famous/notorious anyway. Might as well make a buck from it.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
A true American would cash in on her fame while it lasts. Get free travel across the country doing talk shows. Get a big advance for that novel she was thinking of writing. Get paid $50,000 by the National Enquirer for her exclusive side of the story. Get an endorsement contract from Nike. There are endless possibilities.
If I used a sig over again, would anyone notice?
it was amusing watching "The Daily Show" as Jon Stewart heroically struggled to steer away from the all-too-obvious Weiner jokes.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
WTF does that mean? The photo was in his boxers? The Congressman's boxers were bulging? What does any of this have to do with the guy's net accounts?
A tweet with a link to a picture of a left-leaning erect penis (within boxers) was posted "@" her via Tony Weiner's twitter account. The Congressman says he was hacked (plausible given the left-leaning wiener), and since he was hacked, there is no story here. Move along. Move along.
I RTFA but couldn't find an explanation of how being sent a photo via twitter caused her personal information to be passed around the way the summary describes.
It's good to see that Slashdot is respecting this woman's desire not to have her name and age posted everywhere on the internet.
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/interweb
Dilbert RSS feed
Forget about crotch shot pics and twitter, try buying a house sometime. Suddenly just about everything about you is in the public records for web sites to mine and resell.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
I've long since gotten used to the idea that everything I say online - going back to Usenet days and even before - will stay with me forever. Some times you just have to remind people that it was X years ago and people/opinions change. Would you take advice from someone in mid-life whose opinions hadn't changed since their teens?
That's all garden-variety stuff by now, but I did have a more interesting case come up on my website. I had occasion to write about someone who was trying to scam people with an online "contest" that was rigged. Yes, I named names, especially after the guy (who went by more than one name BTW) tried to intimidate me with fake legal threats. Years later, I got email saying that he'd reformed, he was trying to get a job, but potential employers would Google for his name and find my site. Tough luck, I thought, and continued to think as the pleas kept coming every few months for years. What finally got my attention was when he mentioned that he now had a family. This little piece of history, no matter how valid, was now starting to affect *other people* who were completely innocent. While I don't believe in censorship, I do believe in the validity of the "statute of limitations" concept so I decided on a compromise. The article about this guy is still on my site, you can even find it by searching there, but you can't find it by searching on Google. (Robots.txt plus referer blocking specific to that post, for those who care.)
The lesson is that the existence of information and the ease with which it may be looked up are two different things. Dirt is just too easy to find, for the same reasons that gold is too hard: search engines' evaluation of "importance" or "relevance" doesn't always match any sane human's. While it should be *possible* to find someone's decade-old forum posts, perhaps it's not quite right for the most inflammatory thing they ever said to be the very first thing that shows up in a casual search . . . and it often will be, because controversy drives higher rankings. Making stuff just a little bit harder to find, like we all do here with low-rated comments and like I basically did in this little anecdote, deserves more frequent consideration as an alternative to deletion.
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
Too bad people need to learn the hard way. People are like that.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Tony - The problem wasn't the alleged hacking... the problem was the odd behavior for someone who supposedly had their account hacked... You know the same way that TO's brother posted some stuff on his Twitter account. The simple question of, "So, that wasn't a picture of you?" was met with extreme anger, and no answer. A simple chuckle, and "No, but I wish it was" would have ended the story right there.
In fact, even if you said, "Yes, it was me. I honestly don't know how someone got that picture" this would have gone away very quickly again.
The questions about getting the FBI or some other agency involved were handled perfectly. Claiming it's harmless and a prank was an excellent defense... but seriously, 15 more seconds of handling that last question would have saved you a lot of ridicule. You were soooo close.
And if he says he was hacked, it's true, no? And his embarrassing attempts to deflect questions from the press don't suggest he just MIGHT be playing a little loose with the truth?
*IF* (and that's a big *IF*) he is lying, he (and all public servants (elected or appointed)) who engage is such compromise behavior put themselves up for risk of blackmail should the wrong person/group find out. And as public servants, their actions on behalf of the public may be compromised/corrupted.
So, yes -- there *IS* some concern here... And since a simple call to the FBI would have reviled the source IP (and effectively ruled out the Congressman) there ARE unanswered questions. His statements saying he didn't send the pic but that he "can't say with certitude" that the pic *ISNT* him opens all kinds of questions for reasonable people.
If I were her I would seek *ahem* penal damages.
If you put info out there.. it will be out there.
This is a good example of people not respecting XYZ because it didn't happen to them, right up until it happened to them. I wish people were smarter.. figure out that whole *actions have consequences* thing.
"drivers license information" not available online or offline to private person, you have to work for the police, or to the DMV , or insurance of the persons. In other word somebody abusing its work to get data it should not spread, and that is always a possibility.
", income from tax returns, " not available at all here, unless you are a worker for the tax departement or for the firm "controlling" departement. But not available online whatsoever.
"associations via family members, past properties owned or rented," Not available online , except under the potential form of downloadable telephon book. That one I give you anybody a bit clever could save those database year after years.
"and MUCH more is all available online from public databases" no , not from online DB. Some maybe from offline, some from people breaking their work confidence, but certainly not online (except in the US maybe). Other country have privacy law stopping such crap to go online unless leaked illegaly.
For ever and ever and ever and..
When I went to read the article that is linked, I went down into the comments. The FIRST one, among many others along the same line, is from an online 'reputation' company basically advertising how important their services are because of this convenient incident. Included is a way to contact them for their services.
On what planet do bloggers suddenly allow ads like this in their comments... when they are not working together?
But the fact is, 'until a site's Webmaster removes the offending content, it will remain accessible via search engines like Google,' says blogger Dan Tynan."
Wrong.. once it is on the interwebs, it lives forever in caches and history scrapers etc..etc.. once you go digital..you dont go back.
As Jon Stewart noted, apparently both Congressman Weiner and the penis lean hard to the left.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
So the solution is to go mainstream too and give a few interviews denying everything in the hope those interviews will get the upper hand over the gossip?
It might. Future will tell.
Privacy is terrorism.
Since I can get addons for firefox which query google randomly every second, why can't ms cordova get an app that sends out tons and tons and tons of spam with her name, permutations of her name, etc etc....quickly making it impossible to find the real info
I feel for the guy. So will every teenager or young adult who ever did anything stupid or who ever publicly held values they now repudiate when it comes time to looking for a job and when their inability to get one hurts their family or they have to go on public assistance and all the taxpayers get hurt.
Hopefully, the teens of today that turn into the hiring managers of tomorrow will realize that people do change and a person's irresponsible past and the fact that they've learned from it is an asset not a liability.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
County records, county tax appraisals, property records, court records, etc have always been public information. That precedent goes back hundreds of years so you should not be surprised people mine that information and use it for all kinds of purposes, including marketing.
And since Weiner won't confirm nor deny that the picture is actually him (which is a little odd), that line seems a little premature. Unless the poster knows something we don't.
That last interview with Wolf Blitzer, it sounded like he was saying that there ARE pics like that of him, but he couldn't say if that was one of them nor how it got onto his twitter feed. There was a fair bit of tap dancing in his answers though, so who knows... more importantly, who cares?
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
There is no such thing as privacy. Privacy requires a compact between people that what person B knows about person A will not be distributed. Well, today what you know is worth money, so goodbye compact. Even if all it does is create one more visitor to a web site with ads, that translates to real or at least potential money in someone's pocket.
Then there is mirroring, archiving and copying. Sorry, but lots of stuff is mirrored and archived. The minute it appears the mirroring and copying start. This means that even the person that posted something has lost control over it. Can you find all the copies? No. You are going to get braindead bloggers that think it is cute to find something salacious and copy it for their blog. It gives them "content" which drives traffic - braindead, non-creative content but content all the same. Again, the driver today is money - no content = no money.
This person is trying to stop a tidal wave with a teacup. It isn't going to happen. The idea that you can collect up all the pieces and make them go away is a fantasy and it is impossible today.
I think you are spot on with you analysis. I don't understand why he is skirting around the issue of whether or not it's him. A simple answer of "No, I wish" or "Yes, I don't know how somebody got that picture" (it isn't a crime to have your photo taken in your underwear - it's a little odd if you posed for it, but it could be a candid picture) or even "I honestly don't know" (after all there is very little in the picture that is distinctive and if it's a picture somebody else took - again candidly - him might of never seen it before). But outright refusing to answer and dodging the question is weird.
Perhaps he hopes it'll put a stop to all those tiny Weiner jokes?
People on the right think that Rep. Weiner attempted to direct message a picture of his privates to a girl but accidentally sent it on his feed were everyone could see it.
People on the left think that Rep. Weiner's twitter account was hacked.
Either way, he's not handling things properly.
If his account was hacked, then someone has the ability to send out faked messages from a public official. This needs to be investigated to see if it was just him not being careful with his password or if there's a security flaw in twitter. Imagine if you got a faked tweet from President Obama's twitter account that said "Bombs dropping in 30 min. Take cover now!"
If his account wasn't hacked, then he's lying about sending lewd pictures to a young woman.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Keywords: hot, pic, pictures, bangable
She's short and "full-figured" so unless that's your type, you won't find her hot. You may like her rack if you find Playboy centerfolds arousing.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Information = Signal - noise. Why try to destroy the signal when it is easier to add noise to the point that information obtained is useless. In plain speak, add lots of random information associated with your name on different social networking and other sites. Result is that anyone looking for you will get such diverse and nonsensical information that they will abandon the pursuit and profile.
I've never worn gray boxers like that.
See? It's not that hard.
um...
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Having an incredibly common name is a wonderful thing sometimes. There are literally thousands of me in there. Even in my current town, there are approximately ~400 that people they've pulled up - and *none* of the results have my current address (even after drilling down manually *myself*) - they had exactly one addy/name combo that matched, that was inaccurate by over 3 years. I popped in via open proxy to insure that they didn't dredge through their visit records and get a sniff. :)
Good luck finding out which one the thousands of guys who share my name is me, s'all I can say.
(Heh - John Galt? No thanks - I have a perfectly usable and apparently damned anonymous real name, thanks.)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Doesn't that pretty much define most of our politicians anyway?
And if he says he was hacked, it's true, no? And his embarrassing attempts to deflect questions from the press don't suggest he just MIGHT be playing a little loose with the truth?
I suggest that hacked isn't quite the right word. I think that someone he knows -- a staff member, a relative, a friend -- posted the picture.
--
JimFive
Please stop using the word theory when you mean hypothesis.
It was NOT Weiner's wiener. Jon Stewart, who roomed with the guy in college, said on The Daily Show,m that Weiner's package is NOT that large. Of course, having a less than impressive package, Weiner might claim that it could be his enormous package in the picture. But look at the known facts: this was publicized by serial liar Andrew Breitbart. The user who brought this to Breitbart's attention has an unhealthy fixation on Weiner, and has stated his desire to destroy the man. It has been demonstrated exactly how the yfrog account was compromised, and just today, yfrog disabled the email submission system that allowed the picture to be posted to Weiner's account.
Most importantly, Weiner is pushing hard for an investigation of Supreme Court justice Thomas's tax evasion and refusal to report the money his wife received to lobby against the Affordable Care act. This right wing smear job is a transparent ploy to throw the media off that trail and make Weiner look bad.
There WILL be a criminal investigation, and the culprits will almost certainly be brought to justice, this time they went too far, and the FBI is involved. I, for one, would love to see Breitbart in prison.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
please clarify your post, as it is pretty clear at this point that this was a scam and unlikely from the Congressman.
In the last 20 years some states have passed laws prohibiting court clerks from giving un-redacted copies of certain records to the general public.
This is because many records, especially military records, include things like Social Security numbers that aid in identity theft. Back before the digital age many veterans filed copies of their military records with the courthouse so they wouldn't be lost. There was no concern about someone pulling the record and stealing their identity.
So, in one sense the ease of access to data is a lot easier than before, but in another, some data that was once available is not any more, at least not from the same public document.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
"Isn't exactly that attitude the source of all our problems"
No, the lying is the source of the problems. Talk about blaming the victim.
The young woman in question is a hard core leftist and absolutely enamored with Anthony Weiner, jokingly claiming he (among a number of lefty politicians) is her boyfriend although they have never met. That was why she was chosen by Breitbart and his accomplices for this smear of Weiner. Jon Stewart said on The Daily Show last night (and the night before) that he roomed with Weiner in college and Weiner's wiener is not that big. Today, yfrog disabled the email submission system due to a known bug that was used to hack Wiener's account. The user who started the smear somehow knew about the posting immediately, even though he is not a follower of either Weiner or the woman's twitter feed. The metadata in the image does not match any camera Weiner owns.
Remember, this all comes from serial liar Andrew Breitbart, the man who got Shirley Sherrod fired for no reason. Weiner is pushing for investigation of Supreme court Clarence Thomas for tax evasion and failing to report that his wife received hundreds of thousands of dollars to lobby against the Affordable Care act. That is the real reason the right wants to destroy him. This smear has been in planning for several months.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
When I attended college in the early 1980's the small private college I enrolled in used our Social Security Numbers as our student ID. I am not sure how they've cleaned that mess up....
There are entities out there that would do nearly anything for that kind of publicity. I dunno, maybe she could use it for something.
Why are people so obsessed with erasing themselves from the Internet? You can't erase yourself from paper records any easier. The Internet is just a medium, albeit faster and more efficient in some use cases.
Just like with paper, if you don't want the information being found, don't let it get written down in the first place.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
"I did not have sex with that woman"
Nope, he did it.
"There are WMDs in Iraq"
Nope, none, just a lie to get us to support a war.
"will not sign any non-emergency bill without giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House website for five days"
Absolutely within his power as President to unilaterally accomplish, no compromising necessary. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was non-emergency and Obama decided to sign it two days after passing with no posting on the White House web site.
"Letâ(TM)s look at the number 1. Number 1, thatâ(TM)s the number of new drilling permits under the Obama administration since they came into office."
That's Michelle Bachmann. The Obama administration had approved 276 permits by the time she said that.
"They're advocating net neutrality, which is essentially censorship of the Internet!"
Another Bachmann classic. Maybe she's not lying, maybe she's just plain crazy.
And I could fill a small book with the various lies politicians say about guns in order to further their agendas.
I'm not talking about promises they couldn't fulfill due to realities, I'm talking about lies.
Instead of trying to remove any trace of yourself from the internet, you should dilute the information with so much disinformation, that no one would trust using the internet as a source about you. If I google your name and find that you served time for kidnapping the Lindbergh baby, you were once the President of Bulgaria, and you shot JFK, then I can pretty much figure that whatever I read about you on the net is bullshit.
And he'd go through all this to protect them? I doubt it. The guy who reported this originally is receiving death threats -- and while you "suggest" that hacked isn't quite the right word, I would suggest you listen to Congressman Weiner use it several times to describe the event.
To prove his innocence he must demonstrate that his wiener is small? Maybe he'd rather be thought guilty.
Seems like Weinergate is giving the Republicans a Boehner.
> It wasn't him.
Bullshit. I live in NYC, and several weeks ago on another idiotic point of Weiner I wrote him off as an idiot. Period. UBL's dead, so give the (taxpayers') reward money to the "victims" of the Twin Towers. Enough. When you get hit by a bus the US does not give your kin and kilth free money, even if they're desperate for it. That's what savings and insurance are for. We all die eventually. T. McVeigh's Oklahoma victims did not get any money! Enough coddling.
To your point. Innocent persons in these circumstances walk, whilst a _guiltless_ politician _RUNS_ to the police to report harm. Harm to their personal reputation, their family's reputation, their political party's reputation, their institution's reputation, their professional reputation. Righteously, one, anyone will even report this as societal harm. You might say it's overly noble, but Weiner's supposedly a fighter, pugnacious, right?
He's guilty of this sin. He just does not want to get burned when an official investigation pries into his dark life---whilst placed under oath.
It was a simple case of rightwing Republican dirty tricks. Whocouldanode? http://thetimchannel.wordpress.com/2011/06/03/case-closed/ Enjoy.
This ain't no upwardly mobile freeway This is the road to hell
Your low score should show you what you should think of slashdot posters. Slashdot posters don't like truth and love cool-aid from the liberal media. That wont ever change.
"In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash"
The fact that you are proven 100% wrong I doubt will even phase you. You are quite sad, unfortunately you are not alone..
"In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash"