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Google Deleting Private Profiles
An anonymous reader writes "Google announced that it will no longer support private Google Profiles after July 31. The move comes as Google is rolling out its latest social experiment, Google+. Those who have already been admitted to Google+ will see their Google+ profiles replace their Google Profiles. At the moment the only information Google requires users to reveal is their name and gender."
Google+ is even worse than Facebook on this regard. When you join Google+, your profile is already public to the whole internet and search engines. And because it's Google, they have already indexed it by then. There is no way to set it private before it's already public. Now they also want that people really make everything public in their search engine. Of course it makes business sense for Google, but is not good for users that want privacy. Google even uses good marketing language to soften the user. Such stuff never says "Yes", but it reads "oh that's okay". Dirty tricks.
I never had a Google Profile and opted out of Buzz as soon as I could.
How do I opt out of Google+?
What even was Google Profile?
Slashdot needs Geekcode | Can anyone recommend any good SCIFI? My tastes: Foundation, Startide Rising, CITY, Ringworld,
I got an invite into Google+, was on for a very short time (around 10 minutes I would guess), in which I already had several people "pre-add" me to their lists - for a brand new account (so how exactly have these relationships been formed, or is this some Buzz "feature" where certain people are automatically just linked to my Google+ account?)
I searched around for the privacy settings and was able to (A) first find a location that would remove ALL my Google accounts (but I still use Gmail, so that's not an option), and (B) something that would remove all public account information (and hopefully close the Google+ account). Which it appears to have done.
Didn't really see the need for the service, and my Google Accounts (https://www.google.com/accounts/ManageAccount) seems to indicate that: "You don't yet have a public profile. Learn more
Create a profile or edit your personal info without creating a public profile."
So what does this really mean for me? They're going to be deleting what, exactly?
somewhat OT, but can anyone recommend a good webmail provider whose business is not selling and analyzing our private communication, but providing a good webmail client? I don't mind paying, my privacy is worth it.
Google does not sell information and only lets programs(never people) analyse your messages (acc to Google's p.p. )
i believe the advertising analyzes is disabled on non-free corp accounts
and btw any anti spam filter analyzes your messages and any mail provider can read your mail
if you want privacy, then build your own (fire-)wall and setup a mail server behind this.
Unlike some of the comments here state, Google+ does *not* make all of your stuff public the second you enter it. For each field that you fill in there is a box that states (initially) "Everyone on the web", once you've filled in the field you get the chance to chance every bit of profile information and decide exactly who it goes to. With your real name for example you can choose to share it with everyone, only people in your circles, people in extended circles (friends of friends), with a specific circle i.e. family only or work colleagues only or you can choose to keep it completely private, or you can just not fill it in. As stated in TFA there are only 2 pieces of info you are *required* to give. If you're that paranoid you can make your nickname public or just to IRC friends for example so you know they'll get a piece of info that they can identify you by but not the rest of it.
It's really a great system in my opinion, I love the flexibility and fine-grained settings, miles better than Facebook.
Also for the record this: "When you join Google+, your profile is already public to the whole internet and search engines. And because it's Google, they have already indexed it by then. There is no way to set it private before it's already public." is complete crap as the settings I mentioned above are applied before you even hit the "Save changes" button on the profile page.
At least take the time to learn about the thing you're publicly slating, though this is slashdot so I guess you can't expect any actual facts here anymore.
I assume your ISP will have email accounts included in the cost and i have yet to find one without web mail access.
If you pay enough you can even get your own domain name from a lot of places i expect.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_webmail_providers
You don’t need ads when you are getting five dollars or even a lot less a month for doing practically nothing.
My major gripe with facebook (and the reason why I refused to sign up) has always been that they force users to reveal actual data about themselves, initially through the use of university email accounts and then extended to allow workplace email accounts. They have also been known to delete profiles where the user has attempted to hide behind an alias. Thankfully google has not done this and as such my google account profile contains a phony name with a DOB and location to match.
"My privacy is *very* important to me. Who wants to look after my email?"
Buy your own domain and server. It's dirt-cheap nowadays and you can use it for lots of other things too.
Seriously, if you don't want other people able to read your emails without your knowledge the only way is to run your own domain and MX server (however even that is subject to the terms of your agreement with your upstream provider and host - probably only co-lo's would give you a guarantee that they're not just browsing through your server's disks, but you can't practically "force" SMTP encryption for people trying to deliver mail to you).
VPS are dirt-cheap nowadays and can be stupidly easy to setup and have things like SquirrelMail running. Securing them is pretty easy (block all access to webmail/pop3/imap except from your personal static IP address, or even a local address and then VPN in to do those things, and leave only the SMTP ports open to the world).
Email is an inherently insecure, readable, open format. If you want guarantees about who's storing / reading / analysing that data, you want to cut out as many middle-men as possible. Or you could just get a life and not plug in real information into your Google profile...
This is actually the first time I'm really angry at what Google do.
This is not good for Google's future and is in my opinion a pure Evil move. Especially when you see how they word their explanation clearly saying that this is a problem for you to keep your profile.
Of course you have the choice: keep your profile private, they delete it. Put it public and delete all non basic information, the people you know and chat with also loose what you deleted.
Then, they'll make it so that in the future, you'll need a public profile in order to use google services.
As a parent trying to guard the safety of my children online, I can't allow them to have these accounts, for the exact reason cgeys points out. It's sad, because here's this wonderful tool, that I have to treat like a gun in the house.
- Dan.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
And call it a polite proper profile.
I have been noticing the new Google+ tracking cookie popping up across the web as well. (I blocked it with Ghostery.) Not sure what it does, perhaps someone could explain?
No Inflation Taxation without Representation
Buy your own domain and server. It's dirt-cheap nowadays and you can use it for lots of other things too.
I would as a last resort, but I'd rather pay someone to look after it for security fixes, upgrades, spam filter configuration etc. than do everything on my own. Surely there must be providers that have a strict policy regarding privacy / personal information and that can be trusted to stick to it and not consider it something temporary until not sticking to it is profitable enough?
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
Please elaborate on this...
Because I think even the CEO couldn't get Google to remove results.
But hey, it is their search engine and all.
Get your Unix fortune now!
You provide a well connected, sane and non-paranoid point of view. You are clearly helping the real debate going on about privacy.
Get your Unix fortune now!
Read their privacy statement, because you sound like an idiot, they dont keep ip addresses for years on end. You alos dont have a profile just from having a Youtube account. It's sad how many idiot slashdotters fall for this MS/Facebook Privacy FUD. http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/12/facebook-admits-hiring-pr-firm-to-smear-google/
Or you could not put your real information in?
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
If that's a problem for you, here's a tip: DON'T USE YOUR REAL DATA.
People could not care less if your children are named Mr. and Ms. Herp Derp.
"My privacy is *very* important to me. Who wants to look after my email?"
I don't want anyone to "look after my email", I simply want someone to provide transport, storage and protocols / user interface required for me to access it, without any privacy implications that are not mandated by that service. If you think that a business would be unable to provide this without stealing/exploiting private information, you're overly paranoid and should have grave concerns when seeing a doctor, or talking to a lawyer.
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
Mod parent up, cgeys is a paid Astroturfer. Read his comment history 90% have a vague pro MS or pro facebook remark in them. Several stories always get submitted like this with vague unsubstatiated "Google is the privacy devil" themes and out com one of the 2m+ UIDs like him to post the first comment. dave420, x**xy**y and all the rest.
http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/05/12/138229/Facebook-Admits-Hiring-PR-Firm-To-Smear-Google
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/facebook-admits-to-hiring-pr-firm-for-google-smear-campaign/48650
This isn't a social site. It sounds more like a "here's my web card" or something sort of site. Why would you even use it if you wanted that info private?
Who said anything about truth? You don't even have to use your own name. What Google is doing here is this: :)
a) Way before Google+, Google allowed you to create a Profile, and mark it as Public or Private.
b) Private profiles couldn't be seen, and didn't show up in search results. (I had one.)
c) It was as if the Private profiles didn't exist at all, except to their owners.
d) Google sees this as a waste, and decides to delete this waste of space. Unless, of course, you chose to use the profile and make it visible to others.
I don't see what this has to do with Privacy. Google is deleting the private profiles, not making them public. If you want to Google-bash, I saw an article about bugs in Google+ somewhere today. Do use that.
I agree.
My wife and I are about to have our first child and I've had to ask my friends and family not to post pictures of it on facebook. I want my child to have the choice to develop their own online identity and not have to worry that some day when they go to find employment some HR jackass isn't going to google them and use what other people have posted against them.
The responses I get when asking people not to post pictures of my kid online are ridiculous. Everything from "Oh, you're just paranoid" to "Well, I'm going to anyway.". It's pretty sad when a parent can't make a decision to protect their own child without their own parents giving them a hard time.
The other issue is that when kids are young they don't think/realize that when they post pictures of them and their friends drinking under age, smoking pot or other illegal activities it's out there and anyone can find it. All it takes is for them to just be caught/tagged in a picture with others doing it and they're up the creek.
I don't think giving your real name on the internet is a good idea, at all. Because of the special way Internet work, some criminal can collect a lot of information about you, and use that information against you. Where you live, what are you friends, what is the name of your childrens, his age,... maybe you don't provide that information in one place, but using your name and other bits, people can get all the information. Is no safe. If you have a antivirus and a firewall to product your computer, why you don't have a "firewall" to protect your childrens or yourself? this firewall is Gratis, is the anonymity. Using your real name break that protection.
Using a nickname on the internet use to be common sense. But then this type of wallet gardens make popular to use your name. And what happends wen you remove one of the walls of the wallet garden? all the asumptions that where true at first, are not true anymore. A public profile is a wallet garden withouth the wallet. You can, and you will, get your information indexed. Deleting private profiles is like deleting people that use antivirus. Is removing the option to do the things the right way. Is a bad idea. There will be tears, and I will be there to say: I told you so.
-Woof woof woof!
I dont know, he's kinda right.
But mostly wrong; it's a classic troll which successfully got modded up. See, for example this post for a quick explanation of why it's wrong. Or you could just check your account settings which include the option "no public profile".
When I had to create a google acc to use youtube, I had the same idea about Google back then. They will identify me with my modem only a few years later... I dont like this connected account things on the net. Personally.
Google's privacy statement says you can access and control (even delete) any detail you don't want them to have, except stuff they are legally required to retain. However, I do agree on the dislike for connectedness of personal data. One solution is DON'T SIGN UP! Another solution is to use fake data (as in my several abandoned Facebook accounts).
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
There are a bunch of choices out there actually. I work for one of them (FastMail, now owned by Opera)
We also provide excellent standards compliance and some pretty good power-user features.
Honestly, running an email server sucks. Unless you WANT to learn about it, it's something that's a lot better outsourced to someone who can deal with keeping spam filter rules up to date, dealing with mail floods, securing everything.
and my gender is now Bitch!
You're spot on, but for a different reason. HR isn't going to care about baby years, but Hospitals have security measures because they are great places to find and steal babies.
Most all recent smart phones and some newer digital cameras will store coordinates in in the jpeg exif data ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geotagging )
You can post edited photos with the exif data removed, but I would check your own facebook pages for information that might link to you to a specific region within a big city. Examples would be liking a local establishment like a bagel shop or pub or library. Any singular public place. Check the facebook pages of friends and family, do they mention street names or names of schools or school team names? Scouts? Church? how about that resume you might have online? I bet it has your phone number and address right on it.
Just because one might be paranoid, doesn't mean they aren't out to get you. When people roll their eyes at you, tell them only the paranoid survive. What if you *didn't* take every conceivable precaution and something *did* happen? How would you feel then?
- Dan.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
You need a decent amount of knowledge to set that up secure and reliably.
My VPS host provides a few stock installs (I got a custom FreeBSD install, because it wasn't one of their defaults, although NetBSD is). The list includes a load of TurnKey Linux installs. If you just want email, you can buy a cheap account, pick their webmail appliance from the list, and it's up and running almost immediately. You just need to point your DNS at it (most VPS hosts will also sell you a domain and do that bit for you).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
You choose the part you want to show, only Gender and Name are the part you can't hide.
Isn't this the way Facebook doing now ?
Can someone elaborate please? Might help me decide if I care about this or not.
Or you could not put your real information in?
Phillip.
Hi Steve!
My name is Mr. Herp Derp, you insensitive clod!
I added +1 to my site http://www.sibersonik.com/ ,but I did not understand what is that?
http://www.sahibindenemlak.net
>> they filter and censor search results as they (or other big companies) see fit...
Please elaborate on this...
Search for the name of the maid in the DSK rape case.. The CIA doesn't have this kind of security
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Try Lavabit. Their privacy policy appears pretty solid.
I don't want anyone to "look after my email", I simply want someone to provide transport, storage and protocols / user interface required for me to access it, without any privacy implications that are not mandated by that service. If you think that a business would be unable to provide this without stealing/exploiting private information, you're overly paranoid and should have grave concerns when seeing a doctor, or talking to a lawyer.
National Security Letter.
Do these wallets come with cash in them? Or is the garden not that generous?
Apple. Check out MobileMe/iCloud.
Strange coincidence: a talkative colleague on the other side of the office just said to someone "no, the first time I got drunk I was 18". The people around him said "what, really?!" (and 18 is the legal purchase age for alcohol here).
Why should an employer care? Everyone (else) drank before they were 18, no one seems to be any better or worse at their jobs because of it.
We need to move to a system where the subject of information owns copyright over any such information about him/herself. Whether it be my personally-identifying information or my behavioral information (e.g. shopping habits), I should own it. The "collector" of information is NOT the owner! He is merely *borrowing* use of it from me so he can provide a service to me, for which I am paying (in most cases).
I can think of a number of situation where an employer might care. Becoming a Police officer or teacher to name a couple.
Would you want someone openly vocal about how they broke the law when they were younger teaching your kids?
What if you *didn't* take every conceivable precaution and something *did* happen? How would you feel then?
- Dan.
I don't know, alive?
And when they start collating everything you do by IP address collision? IPv6 or MAC address?
Things you did as Mr. Herp Derp suddenly pop up on your profile for all to see anyways?
The days of "Don't Be Evil" are long gone. Google are fucking evil.
google stood up to the chinese government, and left the chinese market rather than censor their search results.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
Does paid GMail use your private information for anything?
I'm sure there are plenty paid webmail hosts that can provide the service you want.
The keyword here is "paid". No company is going to give you anything without expecting something in return.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
You realize that Google's privacy policy doesn't mean shit when a persons profile is public for any length of time. All it takes is a scrape from an unscrupulous host to collect the data to sell to the highest bidder. this is a bad move for privacy and personal choice. I know /. loves all things Google, but this is just a bad idea and it's being done for strictly monetary results to Google's bottom line.
Scraping of social sites already happens with the data going to the highest bidder. It's happened on Facebook for those that didn't know how to hide their data. Google plans to remove the choice entirely.
I don't take such a hard line. You're right drugs are bad and should be eliminated. Although, I don't think everyone deserves to be reported to the police for one stupid mistake. That's something a parent should be left to deal with initially and escalated to police if the parent is ineffective.
I know plenty of good people that did drugs and drank under age that went on to do good things. Had they been caught and charged in their earlier years they probably wouldn't have had a chance to do anything else.
For example there are several presidents (Obama, Bush and Clinton to name a few recent ones) that admitted to doing drugs. Would they have become president if they had been caught earlier? I have my doubts.
Hear hear. I would never hire someone if my googling uncovered pictures of them dribbling mushy apple rice pudding down their chin or, even worse, rolling over onto their belly and trying to crawl. Honestly, I agree with you up to a point, but the time to worry about that sort of thing is not now, when your child isn't even out of the womb. Secondly, your friends and family are the least of your worries. Or do you have a crazy Uncle Bill who'll be smoking pot with your impending son or daughter at their 1st birthday party?
"Social Experiment", I don't think that term means what you think it means.
"Social Networking Experiment", would be a very accurate term for Google+, but "Social Experiment" makes it sound like they are just trolling.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Maybe I'll just have to migrate all my communications onto my own personal server/domain.
Which company will host your server?
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
What if you *didn't* take every conceivable precaution and something *did* happen?
was, what if the kid was kidnapped from school, or the hospital because a friend or family member carelessly posted a Geotagged image on facebook. I know kids were abducted before facebook, but telling the world where and when your kid is alone is asking for trouble.
The worst part is you might not even know someone is posting pictures of your kid online and who knows who's getting access.
I think what he meant by
What if you *didn't* take every conceivable precaution and something *did* happen?
I know what he meant.
Get off the internet and go the FUCK TO SLEEP, Herpie. I am not telling you again. Do not make me get your mother.
Right! Drugs ruins lives... just ask Obama, Bush, Clinton, Bloomberg, etc...Look how they've fallen into poverty. I can't speak to their use of prostitutes.
The most dangerous thing about most drugs is what will happen to you if you're arrested with them. Fucking drug warrior morons who believe that drugs are illegal because they're dangerous, and they're dangerous because they're illegal.
This war on drugs is working out just great for us. Any day now, we'll have it all wrapped up and be done with it.
Seriously? Doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result is the definition of insanity. My state can't afford to pay its bills and is thinking about privatizing state prisons, and you want to lock up kids being kids and ruin their future. When I was 18, the drinking age was 18 and nobody had a shit fit until MADD convinced Reagan to blackmail the states into raising the age. I'm all for locking up violent criminals, but the sheer number of new "offenses" being dreamed up every year is why we have the largest percentage of incarcerated population in the civilized world. All these paranoid, law-and-order-at-any-cost, types are just plain stupid...
That's how bad laws get changed, by people openly breaking the law.
1955 called - Rosa Parks wants to have a talk with you.
I was using the HR thing as an example and maybe it's not an issue in the immediate future, but someday it will be. I just want my kid to be the one who decides what Googling them will find.
My wife has a series of photo albums where her mother took pictures of her as she was growing up. There are plenty of pictures of her naked as a baby, toddler. Maybe those aren't so bad, but there's one picture when she was about seven and had the chicken pox really bad that her mother took several full frontal nude photo of her and put it in the album. I'm sure nether of our parents would think twice about posting those kinds for photos online because they don't understand those photos they share with family may be seen by someone who's not family. Now a days you might even end up in jail for possession of child porn for photos like those. I tried to explain it to my Mom, after she had posted and tag photos of me growing up in all kinds of situations that I'm sure a pedophile would love to get their hands on. I also tried to explain the difference between a private album in your house and one on the internet. I was told all parents take pictures of their kids like that and I was being paranoid. I told her not to call me to bail her out.
I don't have an uncle Bill, but I do have a crazy younger brother who thinks it's cool to take photos of him and his friends smoking up and post them online. He may not try to get them to smoke up before they're teens, but I wouldn't put it past him to try later on.
I think what he meant by
What if you *didn't* take every conceivable precaution and something *did* happen?
was, what if the kid was kidnapped from school, or the hospital because a friend or family member carelessly posted a Geotagged image on facebook. I know kids were abducted before facebook, but telling the world where and when your kid is alone is asking for trouble.
The worst part is you might not even know someone is posting pictures of your kid online and who knows who's getting access.
Precisely. Like say, your tween's friends also on Facebook, parents, grandparents etc. If they do it, and they won't edit the comment, I un-friend them. Sounds harsh, but if someone I know can't be courteous with my private data then they don't have to be linked to me.
- Dan.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
Problem is they're careless with your private data weather you know it or not. I'd rather get a notification saying I've been tagged and tear a strip off someone rather then just not knowing what they're doing at all.
Would you want someone openly vocal about how they broke the law when they were younger teaching your kids?
Yes because the alternative is a hypocrite and I don't want those anywhere near my kids. Unless their crime was diddling kids I don't care.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
Because your little snowflakes are so special someone's going to stalk you on online, go sleuthing until they track you down and then create an elaborate scheme to kidnap them ? Unless your last name is Rockefeller or Hilton, I doubt that scenario is plausible. Criminals are lazy buggers and opportunists, they'll just grab a kid off the street.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
I just think eventually kids will figure out how to break the law on their own. They don't need people in positions of trust telling them they did it and got away with it. Who knows, my kid's not born yet, they might be an idiot like my bother who takes pictures of himself breaking the law and posts them on his facebook page. Some day when my kids are old enough and we're sitting down with a beer talking about the stupid things we did when we were younger I'll tell them what I did in college. Till then they just don't need to know so I'm not going to advertise it.
Good Point.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
And Yahoo, and Bing, and all sorts of other search APIs.
So if the intent is to eliminate use of Google services, switching to ddg won't do it.
It does, however, minimize the amount of data that Google can collect from you as an individual using Google services.
People aren't snowflakes, and that's why it's entirely probable. Who's to say that snatching off the street wasn't the result of research? You can't prove it wasn't.
- Dan.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
When used from a library with access through those paywalls, Google Scholar is made of awesome. It effectively allows searching of virtually every major academic research database from one front end.
But, it would be nice if offered a full citation of articles it finds. The best research databases will offer up the abstract and full citation but not all of them do that.
Alright - I have trouble with collectivism in general. I'm a private person, and I do NOT believe that everything I do should be public. I've written a lot of things, drawing parallels between today's reality, and Orwelle's 1984. I do NOT like the idea of a New World Order, a One World Government, or government censorship, or a lot of other things that we see the world's leadership working toward.
All the same - I can't paint Google as "evil". Or, if there is evil there, it's far more diluted than a number of other equally powerful megacorporations.
Evil. Maybe when you and people like you say that "Google are fucking evil", then you should define what you mean by "evil".
Putting things in perspective, do you think Google is as evil as a huge media megacorporation that employs people to hack into private phone lines, targeting politicians, celebs, murdered and/or missing people? Or, do you think that Google is as evil as a governmental intelligence agency(s) which redefines a whole class of prisoners, so as to deny those prisoners any judicial rights? Or, are they as evil as some tinpot dictator in Africa or Asia, who just executes people who disagree with him?
Evil. If corporations are evil, and Murdoch's empire were to rate a 10 on the evil scale, then I'd have to put Google somewhere around .1 to .5.
But, that's just my opinion.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Because your little snowflakes are so special someone's going to stalk you on online, go sleuthing until they track you down and then create an elaborate scheme to kidnap them ? Unless your last name is Rockefeller or Hilton, I doubt that scenario is plausible. Criminals are lazy buggers and opportunists, they'll just grab a kid off the street.
The scenario you paint isn't all that farfetched. Look through the news of missing, abducted, murdered, and raped children over the past few years. SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE, took notice of that child for SOME REASON.
Why put up a reason for them to notice your kids?
Let's just suppose, some freak who was released from Texas state prison last year happens to live only 20 miles or less from me. I don't know he's there. Even if he happens to be a registered sex offender, I may or may not know that he's there. I post my grand daughter's pic on line, he happens to see it, and the child's appearance just happens to appeal to him. He can see that the child lives close to him - less than a half hour drive. Why WOULDN'T he start stalking my family and I, waiting for an opportunity to steal what appeals to him?
Of course someone from Maine, or Washington, or even London is unlikely to think about stalking my children. But, there really are predators living close to me - and to you!
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Actually - I had a teacher in high school who was very vocal about the laws he broke as a young man. And, he had several scars to show us the penalty for some of the stupid shit he did. It was like, "Look, at this, look what stupidity did to me! Are you stupid? Then don't do as I did, because it was STUPID!!"
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
People aren't snowflakes, and that's why it's entirely probable. Who's to say that snatching off the street wasn't the result of research? You can't prove it wasn't.
- Dan.
You really are paranoid. (paraoia: suspicion and mistrust of people or their actions without evidence or justification)
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
Actually, if all it reports is your name and your gender, stalkers and private investigators probably already know this about you.
Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don't know because we don't want to know. --Aldous Huxley
FFS, I did a lot of things, as a kid, that could have landed me in trouble. Like shooting a duck, out of season, for my dinner. Yep, I shot him, and ate him. Because I'm color blind, I couldn't identify that duck precisely. I saved a few feathers though, because I thought they'd make nice fishing flies. Some old timer saw those feathers, and came half unglued. "You didn't kill that duck, did you? They are protected!" "Oh, no sir! I found these feathers down by the creek!"
And, that wasn't the very worst of what I got up to as a kid, either. I figure, kids will be kids, and whatever they may have done as a pre-teen, or even in their early teens should be forgotten. Later teens - well - that pretty much depends on how serious their "offenses" were. Private party with alcohol, no one's life at risk? No one's business. Drinking and driving, with a fatality as a result? Different story - people have the right to know.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Copyright does not apply to information.
So I can't tell anyone that you drive a Toyota or tell them where you work without getting your permission first. Great idea.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
About 260,000 children are abducted every year in the United States of America. Of these child abduction only about 115 result in very serious consequences, like injury or death.
http://www.ygoy.com/index.php/child-abduction-statistics/
We had a child taken, fortunately we got her back right fast without harm.
>> Fuck - - Off.
- Dan.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
Sorry, friend, out of mod points at the moment. Please accept a thumbs up instead.
Exactly. There's rational caution, and there's harmful overreaction. When your baby is murdered or kidnapped, it'll most likely be a member of the family. How many kidnappings has facebook contributed to? What percentage of total crimes is that?
Miniscule. Be careful about facebook because it may cause relationship problems, or harm employment opportunities... but it's safer than letting your kid play on your front lawn.
People aren't snowflakes, and that's why it's entirely probable. Who's to say that snatching off the street wasn't the result of research? You can't prove it wasn't.
- Dan.
I am so sorry. But really. There is no real hope left for you.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
I wonder if this could be a step toward supporting "profiles" for Google Apps subscribers?
Evil. If corporations are evil, and Murdoch's empire were to rate a 10 on the evil scale, then I'd have to put Google somewhere around .1 to .5.
As evil as Murdoch's empire is I think that unless we give bonus points to Exxon, BP, and all the subsidary corps that form the current oil cartels that his empire would have to take 2nd place to them.
After watching non-stop lies about the latest oil spill I can't see how they are not the current 10 standard for corporate evil.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
"Just because one might be paranoid, doesn't mean they aren't out to get you."
No, you're paranoid. A child is FAR more likely to be kidnapped by a family member than a stranger. And if a stranger does want to kidnap a child, there isn't any shortage of them. He or she doesn't need to go looking at GPS coordinates in family photos.
It can happen, it probably has happened somewhere, it's just extremely unlikely. Probably on the order of getting stuck by lightning and not worth risking your sanity by fretting over it. I'm as afraid for my kids as the next guy but you can't let those fears become irrational and paralyze you.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
Meant to post "Good Point" Up here.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
About 260,000 children are abducted every year in the United States of America. Of these child abduction only about 115 result in very serious consequences, like injury or death.
So how many of those were abducted after online stalking ? You're obviously not much bothered by this yourself since there's personal information and pictures all over your blog (liked from your profile page) and I read you're posting pictures of the kids to Facebook as well.
We had a child taken, fortunately we got her back right fast without harm.
That's rough, glad everything worked out OK.
>> Fuck - - Off.
You've got a quick temper for someone who's "a good shot with a vareity (sic) of firearms."
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
Agree 100%.
Also in keeping with the safety protocol here...
No photos of your children at all. Viruses and such on computers could lead to pic being seen online. (Children seen = Higher Chance of Abduction)
Private school. Hopefully one that has high walls and armed security. Very private with who goes there. (Children seen = Higher Chance of Abduction)
No outside activities. (Children seen = Higher Chance of Abduction)
No friends. Friends could take photos or mention the name of your children ton unapproved people. (Children seen = Higher Chance of Abduction)
This one is important. Never remove you attention from your child for on second.
They could expose themselves to unapproved people, or in general do something dangerous. (Crossing streets, Eating Food, Not looking where they are going)
Death is just around the corner for every child.
Protect them at all costs. Even if it means they never get to really live.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
I get it right, sometimes. I even spell my own name wrong sometimes. The idea got across, didn't it? You understood that I believe a lot of our laws are Orwellian, right?
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Hypothetical scenario.
Say my cousin posts all kinds of pictures of his kid on Facebook and I don't post any of mine. Also say one of our common family members is a pedophile, we don't know they are. Do you think they'd be more likely to take my kid they rarely see or my cousin's that they get daily "look how cute my kid is in the bath" updates for?
I just don't see any reason to make it easier for someone to covet my kid.
Copyright does not apply to information.
Of course it does. What you probably mean is that you can't copyright facts.
So I can't tell anyone that you drive a Toyota or tell them where you work without getting your permission first. Great idea.
Not on a wholesale level, no. And yes it is a great idea. It's called Informational Self-Determination.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
how can you defend a kid smoking pot?
How can you defend sending a kit to jail for smoking pot? He's not hurting anyone but himself (if that!). Sending him to jail hurts him a lot more than pot. What sense does that make?
seriously, however cool it is to do drugs, it is still very harmful to you. and we should be trying to prevent kids from falling into the vicious cycle of drugs>poverty>prostitution>drugs and so on.
True, everyone who uses drugs ends up whoring themselves out. For instance, our last three presidents were all admitted drug users. We can't let that happen to our kids!
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I think the hypothetical pedo will take advantage of the child he has access to be it yours, your cousin's or some other unfortunate. This argument is akin to telling women they shouldn't wear skirts because it could "provoke" men.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
Not everyone believes that being "paranoid" is a bad thing. I usually take measures to prevent something if it's easy (if it is so easy, why not?).
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
I'm sure you're being sarcastic.
There are risks in life and you can't possibly protect your child from everything. However, within reason shouldn't you at least try to protect them from somethings?
Maybe teaching your kid how to identify what kind of wild mushrooms are safe to eat is better then not letting them out in the woods at all. There's also a big difference between having physical photos of your kids in a baby book and posting them all of the internet for everyone to see. The line between being super-overprotective-parent-from-hell and completely negligent isn't razor thing, but finding a good balance where you kid can actually have a life verses being locked in a padded room isn't straight forward.
*Grin*
Read my guidelines again and see if you can pin down an address or as small a general area as you can and message me from my website. I would love a security audit about now. * Braces himself*
- Dan.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
There's rational caution, and there's harmful overreaction.
"Rational" depending on who you ask. If you are able to take steps against something (even if there is a miniscule chance of it happening), and it is easy to do, why not do it?
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
*Grin*
Read my guidelines again and see if you can pin down an address or as small a general area as you can and message me from my website. I would love a security audit about now. * Braces himself*
- Dan.
--
- Since When did being a good citizen in America mean making yourself a good victim?
( Reposted - Slashdot is pissing me off today too :))
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
This argument is akin to telling women they shouldn't wear skirts because it could "provoke" men
No it's not at all. I'm not telling women the shouldn't wear skirts. Just like I'm not telling my cousin not to post pictures of his child. To each their own.
Read their privacy statement, because you sound like an idiot, they dont keep ip addresses for years on end.
They might as well.
Google "scrubs" the last octet of the IP address after 9 months and erases cookie tracking information after 18 months. So 172.16.20.5 becomes 172.16.20.XXX, but it is trivial to cross-reference the "scrubbed" ip address with other info like cookies and frequently used websites to uniquely identify a user in google's records indefinitely.
You alos dont have a profile just from having a Youtube account.
This appears to be true but google has done an absolutely piss-poor job of communicating that. They have such a gigantic set of ever changing "products" that you can't blame a casual user for having no freaking clue what a "google profile" and given the name, it sure sounds like it could be just another name for a centralised google account, like what they forced all youtube users to convert to a couple of months ago.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
You're spot on, but for a different reason. HR isn't going to care about baby years, but Hospitals have security measures because they are great places to find and steal babies.
This has got to be extremely rare. My guess is similar to the odds of getting struck by lightning.
And a 30 second google turns up that in 1983, 101 babies were stolen and 94 of them recovered, out of 4 million babies born (old and new statistics, but I don't imagine they're off by more than a factor of two).
So the odds of your baby being stolen and unrecovered are about the same as being struck by lightning in any given year (1 in a million), and the odds of your baby being stolen at all are about the same as your lifetime risk of getting struck by lightning (1 in ten thousand). While the infant mortality rate is about 7 per thousand, or 70 times higher.
I'm not saying don't worry, but maybe worry appropriate to relative risks.
*all statistics US.
Really? How common is hospital baby theft? It's not like they're hard to make. You wouldn't happen to have stats at hand about how often these security measures are used in a year?
It's amazing how me saying I don't want pictures of my child posted on facebook has turned into I'm going to lock my child in a room until they die. When they're old enough to make the decision themselves knowing the potential risks they can do what they want. While I'm the one that has to make the decision for them it'll be done my way.
This is almost as bad as the time I got in a discussion with a friend at the mall about spanking. While I welcome the opinions and comments of others, and I certainly take them in to consideration. When someone turns a minor thing spanking into ripping a branch off a tree and bludgeoning your child to death with it, it's hard to not think that person is a complete loon and the source of all the problems with society. And yes we did have a women come over and start screaming at us because I said I wasn't opposed to the idea in some cases. Mean while her screaming kid was throwing his lunch across the food court.
Yeah. Usually because they're related to or otherwise know the child in person. My memory's a bit fuzzy, but I'm pretty sure abduction by strangers accounts for less than a quarter of all abductions. There's way better odds in hiding a kid from family and friends than from strangers. Except that would be abduction, wouldn't it?
My Mom gave me pot in the 70's. Nothing bad happened.
I gave pot to my son in the 00's. He turned it down. I said to him: YOU UNGRATEFUL CHILD. I USED TO WALK FIVE MILES IN THE SNOW TO GET A QUARTER OUNCE.
Frankly, I find refusing pot to be indefensible. But since I love my son I'll put up with it.
/. pisses me off every day. That's why it's so fun to read.
Google are fucking evil.
Well, Google tried fucking Good, but Good only wanted to do it missionary position with the lights out and no foreplay or any other fun little bedroom games. Boooooooriiiiinnnnng.
This space unintentionally left blank.
Great explanation. Additionally, a public profile gives you the option to choose whether your profile is indexed by search engines (Google intuitively calls the option "search visibility"). If you're concerned about people finding your profile when they search for you, this is a great option that allows sharing your profile only with people who have the URL.
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For instance, our last three presidents were all admitted drug users
Probably not the best subset to use as a counterexample to the assertion that drugs lead to prostitution.
Just sayin'
Guess again.
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2011/07/how-google-accidentally-helped-expose-dsk-accuser/39691/
"her identity has been well shielded by most American media so far"
The reason you can't find her name easily is because the media has been trying to keep her name out of the stories. Google hasn't been censoring anything, however, so you can use Google to find her identity if you're inclined to do so.
True, everyone who uses drugs ends up whoring themselves out. For instance, our last three presidents were all admitted drug users. We can't let that happen to our kids!
clinton- had sex in the white house and lied about it.
bush- started meaningless wars and brought on the global economic recession.
obama- is adamant on shutting down nasa and all other scientific endeavors.
yeah, drug users are great people!
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.