grasshopper
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
- Joined
- Oct 9, 2010
- Messages
- 2,472
Ghostery, may help.
True. But what is worse . . . getting bombarded with ads, which happens every day or the government putting me in jail which essentially never happens. There are plenty of commercial abuse possibilities that are more likely to happen such as denial of insurance; denial of a loan; identity theft.
Not long before headlines exposed National Security Agency programs that secretly collect records of Americans' phone calls, another surveillance system got far less attention: Nordstrom, the department store chain, acknowledged it was tracking customers without their knowledge in 17 stores.
Nordstrom had hired a company to log a unique number emitted by shoppers' smartphones, which automatically connected to Wi-Fi systems as they moved through the stores. A day after a Dallas TV station broke the story last month, Nordstrom announced it was discontinuing the program.
... I constantly receive mail-order catalogs for "plus-sized" underwear (hammock-sized, heavily reinforced brassieres) .. .
You say this like it's a bad thing.
I thought it over last night and It's just not worth it, today the blog will be over and done with.
I find this very sad.
I had considered setting up an anonymous blog about a legal experience I had with a certain group of unsavory individuals, but after reading this, I'm thinking it's not worth the trouble.
... I have NEVER signed onto my gmail account, or any other account related to the real me on this computer. However, over time, I have been lazy more than a couple of times and tethered to my phone and then searched for something on Google that could possibly be tied back into the "real" me. Google is uncanny in how they seem to know before you even finish typing what you are searching for. ...
These are the commentaries that bother me the most in this thread. They make me wonder how much information/opinion/entertainment is already being withheld from the public domain due to these kinds of fears and how much more we will lose down the road.
+1. Excellent summary ERD. Read this people. There are good reasons to be concerned about privacy but a lot of this "creepy" stuff is actually pretty benign.I still don't get this fear you have over a connection being made between an 'anonymous account' and the 'real you'.
How are any of the actions you mentioned going to possibly let any friends of yours know that you are that other blog's author? You might see some common ads if you are on the computer, using it under both personas, but so what?
Remember, those 'do you know this person' emails didn't come about because they figured out who the 'real you' is, they just saw that your alter ego's friends had common friends that your alter ego may know. Had nothing to do with 'you' - or they would have sent them to your email account (since they know 'everything' about you').
If you are afraid that a person you know might just happen upon your blog, and make the connection, then you need to keep the info non-specific enough to avoid that, or just drop it. But I don't think google or any net-bot is going to try to connect you, and then tell your friends. Why would it - they are too busy trying to make money, they really don't care about you, other than trying to get ads in front of you.
And you can turn off the 'hinting' in google searches. It doesn't 'know' anything about you - those are common aggregate search terms that others use. I find them quite handy when I'm struggling to find the right terms to search. Others come from your own browser history, and you control that.
Example. If I want to go to firecalc.com, I just start typing f-i-r-... into my address bar, and it suggests firecalc.com because it in my history. Handy for me.
When I went to search for a youtube link, I type youtube buddy guy into the google search bar, and it starts listing common searches. Not what I was looking for, so I add 'r' and then 'e' and it completes it with 'red house'. Bingo.
Google doesn't know that I own that CD. It doesn't care about me. Those are common searches. It doesn't try to connect me to my other web personas that I keep separate email accounts for.
I'm not saying you shouldn't be vigilant and concerned, I just think those concerns are misdirected.
-ERD50