Slashdot Mirror
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's good to see that Slashdot is respecting this woman's desire not to have her name and age posted everywhere on the internet.
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.
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.
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 have a pair just like them! And I think there may even be some scantly clad pictures of me out in the world. If it had shown up on MY twitter feed I would be hard pressed to unilaterally deny being the subject. I don't believe it was me, IIRC I wasn't wearing that pair of underware that night, but it could be a pic of me from years ago with the time stamp altered.
-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
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
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