Comments on: Internet “Privacy” Doesn’t Exist

By: Amy

Amy — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 18:55:29 +0000

Thanks for posting this, Lili. As a stalking researcher, it’s very interesting. As someone who’s starting a new project investigating the role of social networks in relationship initiation, maintenance, and dissolution (including stalking), this is terrific! Thanks for helping me out with my study I’m in the process of finding out how people use these sites to do these things. Since I don’t use them (I do study stalking, after all), I’m in the midst of asking people what goes on relationship-wise on these sites. We’ve (myself and a collaborator) have just started this project, so we’re only in the beginning stages. Anyway, thanks for the info.

By: chelicera

chelicera — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 20:59:13 +0000

If you’ve ever given $250 or more to a political party, your name and home address are available to anyone who can access Google. For years already. And with Google maps, anyone can then see your house.

By: Jhada Addams

Jhada Addams — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 20:26:54 +0000

As an aside, but kinda in addition, to this – it’s truly alarming how many ‘tweeners’ are taking the most baldfaced, sexual pictures of themselves and sending them hither and yon to any Tom, Dick or Harry in their peergroup in the interest of ‘titillating’. (well, I guess we can only *hope* that these guys are within their peergroup, instead of being a 47 year old schlub that sits in their basement pretending to be a 12 year old boy from another city)

I wonder if these kids care that, by default, these photos get shared amongst rather large groups of people. I mean – kids aren’t exactly known for their subtlety at that age, and revenge is an almost Mafioso kind of endeavour for some of them. There have already been cases where ‘dissed’ boyfriends/girlfriends have placed the pictures in the most inconvenient of places, for all to see – to shame the once ‘object of their affections’. Hell, adults pull this kind of behavior too.

It is to squick.

And yay – Meatspace.

By: Susan Simko

Susan Simko — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 19:27:29 +0000

It’s just not “us” violating our own privacy on social networks, the government also does a really good job, too.

Got an idea of where someone might live? Well, if they own a house or any real estate, you can look it up in the county clerks records – a lot of which are online now. If you want to get a rough idea of what their income bracket is, look up the appraised value of their home. A lot of places also have the voters registration records online. Ditto with marriage records, birth certificates, addresses of listed phone numbers, etc.

Thing is, these records have always been a part of the “public record”. The big difference is that the internet has made it easier to access the data.

By: Elizabeth Burton

Elizabeth Burton — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 19:27:27 +0000

The only way to be truly private in our modern world is to withdraw from it. Find a little cabin deep in the woods. Even then, you’ll likely have the occasional park ranger or hiker stopping by.

However, the real issue is people thoughtlessly posting chatter that gives away information they really don’t want known. Like the man recently who blamed Twitter that his house was broken in to while he was on vacation. Sorry, toots, you were dumb enough to tell the world you were leaving, which is one of the basic no-nos on any level. Like not stopping the newspaper so they pile up on the doorstep. Duh.

And Kerry’s right as well–just because a site asks for a profile doesn’t mean you have to make a full confession. If your goal is to touch base with people from the past, a few significant items should be more than sufficient.

That said, it would behoove social network sites to include warnings at ever stage of the registration process about not giving out too much personal information. Given there are still tens of millions of Windows users who have no idea they should be using virus protection, assuming people signing up for social media will remember on their own is a bit overly optimistic.

By: Kerry Allen

Kerry Allen — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 19:13:46 +0000

It alarms me to no end when people fill out those “memes” with their middle names, pet names, streets they were born on, and a slew of other answers to what are fairly typical security questions for things like their online banking and credit card services, as well as when they post pictures of their children.

Call me a paranoid alarmist if you must, but if I can see the exploitation potential, so can the sort of people who do the exploiting, and it’s foolish to make it easier for them than it already is.