Facebook - Scary

[grasshopper]

Ghostery, may help.

 

[REWahoo]

Ghostery, may help.

+1

Ghostery.com

 

[Nodak]

+1

Ghostery.com

+2

 

[martyp]

Unless I make a conscious effort I don't really see the ads. I have no idea what ads are being directed my way.

 

[Texas Proud]

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.

Yes, the companies can make your life miserable.... but that seems to be accepted by society today....


I am really surprised how much someone can be 'in the system'. One of our employees recently retired and I am the lucky one to get her emails.... I swear that I get 50 emails a day from companies she has signed up with... I remember her complaining about all the emails she had to read when she got back from vacation, but I never knew it was her fault!!!

 

[Bestwifeever]

Everybody is watching us all the time: The NSA is watching. So are Google and Facebook - chicagotribune.com

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.

 

[ls99]

Fret not. The US postal service has been recording and storing the outside info of all mail. Just another public ervice of the gummint. No warrant needed unless mail is to be opened. The exterior is considered public information.

 

[Lsbcal]

Here is an alternate view of the web advertising game. My son has recently gotten a job with a social media add firm. They work with franchisees to do things like make the "like" button into an advertising opportunity feature. This is not really intended to be intrusive to the customer, just trying to make an impact and in so doing earn a decent salary.

Some of this seems intrusive, and I avoid advertising like the plague. But I like the fact that some nice relatively hard working young people can find a job opportunity in the current work world (as it is, not how we'd like it to be) doing this stuff. They will not all be scientists, engineers, and doctors.

 

[redduck]

... I constantly receive mail-order catalogs for "plus-sized" underwear (hammock-sized, heavily reinforced brassieres) .. .

You say this like it's a bad thing.

 

[Amethyst]

Well, if I were into such things, I suppose I'd find the models [-]overwhelming [/-]enticing....but I thought the whole point of being "tracked" by advertisers, was to precisely target the consumer's wishes/needs. So far, the advertisers' efforts have been a dismal [FAIL].

You say this like it's a bad thing.

 

[SumDay]

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.

 

[CoolChange]

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.

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.

 

[ERD50]

... 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. ...

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

 

[aja8888]

Heck, I have been using GMail for years and use it as my personal e-mail address now. I also have my work e-mail and my XXXX@att.net e-mails forwarded to my GMail account (nice feature, BTW). None of this has ever caused me any grief or scamming. It's a nice service while I travel, and I travel a lot for business. I can also send clients e-mails from myGMail account and change the outgoing header so it looks like it is being sent from my work account.

Worrying about scamming, I got scammed last month at a restaurant where I handed my PenFed card to the waiter to pay my bill. He got PenFed for $1746.00 for some StubHub tickets. Fortunately, I caught that unauthorized charge the next day and I would assume that waiter is a goner. This credit card stuff seems to be a much bigger risk than managing a net account like Facebook or GMail.

 

[martyp]

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.

I don't worry about this at all. He wants to be anonymous in a blog to make comments about someone else. Either he is public or he is not. A blog is public. If he wants to be private he can skulk in some restaurant on a country road . . . or use email.

 

[JustMeUC]

-ERD50

It's too complicated for me to understand and it's just not worth worrying about anymore. So as you said, I should just drop it.... which I did today. End of the story for me.

 

[jollystomper]

One big impact with the lack of privacy is that if you are accused of anything and your name goes public, from a data standpoint you are instantly guilty. For example, lets say you get arrested for something that turns out to be a misunderstanding or downright wrong. Your mugshot can become public, the article about the arrest is public. If you have a FB page it can be raided to get any pictures of you. If those things are later dropped your mugshot and original arrest is out for all to see and much easier to find than the fact that ultimately you were deemed innocent.

Fortunately this has not happened to me. But I know 2 people that it happened to, one can no longer work in his desired profession and the other had to move because of the association of her address with the incident.

 

[donheff]

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

+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.