Andy Hornblower
Well-Known Member
- Messages
- 325
- Location
- Manchester, England, England
Pete thought it would be a good idea to start a thread off, along these lines - re-posting something I said in a PC about the new map.
Before the almost inevitable debate starts (which I reserve the right not to get involved in... much), I'd like to say that I think the map is a good thing. I just don't want to be on it. I fully encourage the rest of you to sign up for it though
I would suggest you might not want to be too specific about your location - a postcode stub (like E17) or the name of your town, followed by UK, will work.
Hopefully, this is useful in a wider context:
"Not wanting to get into this too deeply; when we talk about ourselves online, we give away information that stays out there for some time. It's not hard to piece it together to find out quite a lot about someone. In this case, for example (map->profile->posts I've made), it's easy enough to find a list of some of the more expensive things I own. I might also give away things about my lifestyle that give clues about when I'm most likely to be out, and for how long.
There are two main things, I guess - the possibility of identity fraud, and the possibility of targeted burglary. There are others, but I won't go into those. Card fraud just happens as a result of using a card online at all, so I don't think about that too much (it's happened to me a few times) but ultimately, I could quite easily leave enough clues lying around to give someone a good idea of how profitable it would be to burgle me, where I live, and what times of day I'll most likely be out. They wouldn't need to know my real name - that's not relevant to the process.
I've read that software has been written that trawls forums, Facebook and so on, and can piece together all the information that's available about someone, with a reasonable degree of certainty, even though they used different accounts to talk about different aspects of their life. I'm assuming that's mostly used by the FBI, NSA... maybe Google, for some reason, but that doesn't particularly bother me.
If someone puts in the effort, they can probably find most of that out whatever I do, short of not talking about myself online at all, but I wouldn't want to make it too easy.
If the information is completely public, and reachable just by googling, it's possible to come across information you weren't even looking for.
Whether it's an entirely rational reaction, I couldn't say, but personally, I would not be comfortable tying my location to my other details, publicly.
Plenty of other people are happy to talk about every aspect of their lives though, so whatever you decide, some of them will sign up. Maybe most of them. I really don't know."
Before the almost inevitable debate starts (which I reserve the right not to get involved in... much), I'd like to say that I think the map is a good thing. I just don't want to be on it. I fully encourage the rest of you to sign up for it though
I would suggest you might not want to be too specific about your location - a postcode stub (like E17) or the name of your town, followed by UK, will work.
Hopefully, this is useful in a wider context:
"Not wanting to get into this too deeply; when we talk about ourselves online, we give away information that stays out there for some time. It's not hard to piece it together to find out quite a lot about someone. In this case, for example (map->profile->posts I've made), it's easy enough to find a list of some of the more expensive things I own. I might also give away things about my lifestyle that give clues about when I'm most likely to be out, and for how long.
There are two main things, I guess - the possibility of identity fraud, and the possibility of targeted burglary. There are others, but I won't go into those. Card fraud just happens as a result of using a card online at all, so I don't think about that too much (it's happened to me a few times) but ultimately, I could quite easily leave enough clues lying around to give someone a good idea of how profitable it would be to burgle me, where I live, and what times of day I'll most likely be out. They wouldn't need to know my real name - that's not relevant to the process.
I've read that software has been written that trawls forums, Facebook and so on, and can piece together all the information that's available about someone, with a reasonable degree of certainty, even though they used different accounts to talk about different aspects of their life. I'm assuming that's mostly used by the FBI, NSA... maybe Google, for some reason, but that doesn't particularly bother me.
If someone puts in the effort, they can probably find most of that out whatever I do, short of not talking about myself online at all, but I wouldn't want to make it too easy.
If the information is completely public, and reachable just by googling, it's possible to come across information you weren't even looking for.
Whether it's an entirely rational reaction, I couldn't say, but personally, I would not be comfortable tying my location to my other details, publicly.
Plenty of other people are happy to talk about every aspect of their lives though, so whatever you decide, some of them will sign up. Maybe most of them. I really don't know."