Post by AmonRa July 26, 2012 (41 of 46)
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I use fabricated gmail accounts for new monikers (they are free and you can concoct any funny name), because on the internet everybody knows I am a dog.
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The Seventh Taylor said:
I'm with Claude. I'd love the internet to be a nice, decent place with respect for privacy but of course it's an ugly place. The fact that it's near 100% indexed and instantly searchable makes me wary of posting anything under my real name. On a rare occasion I've revealed my real name on this site, as I desired to take credit for the /faq I wrote, but in general I like to be able to post views that may not align with my employer's. I do have a Facebook account and it's on my real name but I scarcely post anything. I might do so more often with an alt account -- something Mark Zuckerberg strongly discourages; like the OP he wants real identities only.
Unlike Funky Monkey I tend to use the same ID across many forums. I keep high standards of common decency but for me the pseudonimity is pretty much a condition for posting my views. In most cases it'll be under this moniker or not at all.
If you're not familiar with the risks of oversharing, have a look at http://pleaserobme.com/
Well, my new Facebook page is up. So far I've only connected with the community of people who understand my moniker but I'm thinking of switching to this new account altogether. I might phase out my old one with my real name (although from what I've read it's difficult to actually get anything off Facebook) but most likely I will use it even less than I already did.
According to Mark Zuckerberg, "having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity". http://michaelzimmer.org/2010/05/14/facebooks-zuckerberg-having-two-identities-for-yourself-is-an-example-of-a-lack-of-integrity/
I think using one identity for everything in life is a sign of a lack of common sense. His assertion I lack integrity sounds ignorant to me but in his case I understand his agenda: He can far more successfully monetize Facebook to marketers and advertizers if everything is linked to real-life people. Well I don't trust Mark Zuckerberg with my private data. And his opinion of people who do trust him should make anyone want to take a distance. http://techli.com/2012/02/zuckerberg-doesnt-understand-identity-or-integrity/
In fact I think I should not trust the internet at all with my personal data, especially after reading this recent harrowing story: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/08/apple-amazon-mat-honan-hacking/all/ (summary here: http://theweek.com/article/index/231678/how-hackers-erased-one-tech-writers-entire-online-life )
Too bad good old Teetdeck v0.38.2 doesn't support multiple FB accounts. It does allow me to manage all my twitter feeds. Another reason to consider switching exclusively to my new id.
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Post by hiredfox August 19, 2012 (43 of 46)
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The Seventh Taylor said:
I think using one identity for everything in life is a sign of a lack of common sense. His assertion I lack integrity sounds ignorant to me but in his case I understand his agenda
+1
Why is it that successful entrepreneurs somehow think themselves automatically gifted as philosophers!
One could guess that 99% of entrepreneurs of his type have no idea why they have been successful let alone be equipped to advise the rest of us of our shortcomings.
Frankly this website is better than Twitter....
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Post by seth August 19, 2012 (44 of 46)
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The Seventh Taylor said:
Well, my new Facebook page is up. So far I've only connected with the community of people who understand my moniker but I'm thinking of switching to this new account altogether. I might phase out my old one with my real name (although from what I've read it's difficult to actually get anything off Facebook) but most likely I will use it even less than I already did.
In fact I think I should not trust the internet at all with my personal data, especially after reading this recent harrowing story: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/08/apple-amazon-mat-honan-hacking/all/ (summary here: http://theweek.com/article/index/231678/how-hackers-erased-one-tech-writers-entire-online-life )
Too bad good old Teetdeck v0.38.2 doesn't support multiple FB accounts. It does allow me to manage all my twitter feeds. Another reason to consider switching exclusively to my new id.
A few points:
1) A lot more of your personal data is out there then you realize -- thus, FB is a small drop in the bucket. In the United States, just about any piece of public record is available on the internet. This includes your vote history (which includes your home address), real estate transactions (again, home address), political donations (again, home address), any kind of court document or police record where you are mentioned. The list goes on and on.
When serious kinds of identify theft happen, such as "tangled titled," it's these public records that are used, not FB.
2) Virtually all online identity theft/hacking is the result of using a weak password or the same password on every site. What hackers do, is break into a site with low security, such as a message board, steal the account e-mail addresses and passwords, and correctly assume that many people use the same password for their e-mail account.
If you use a 10 character password and a different password on every website, you're very well protected.
Articles like the one you've posted are nothing more than fearmongering. The hack is highly labor intensive and depends on people using certain kinds of e-mail services -- it's only going to happen to you if someone is out to get you specifically (in the instance of the Wired reporter, they wanted his 3 character twitter account). Further, weak passwords almost always play a part in hacks like this. And lastly, these articles totally fear monger with headlines like "all the data was erased" -- but it always comes out that the victim never backed up their data. Had they, nothing would have been lost.
So what's the lesson:
1) Whether you like it or not, your data is out there, and what you have on FB is pretty insignificant.
2) If you use 10 character passwords and a different password on every website (especially your e-mail), it's highly unlikely you'll ever be hacked.
3) Backup all of your data using an external hard drive with a program like Time Machine, and backup to an online service like Backblaze.
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seth said:
A few points:
1) A lot more of your personal data is out there then you realize -- thus, FB is a small drop in the bucket. In the United States, just about any piece of public record is available on the internet. This includes your vote history (which includes your home address), real estate transactions (again, home address), political donations (again, home address), any kind of court document or police record where you are mentioned. The list goes on and on.
Fortunately (in this sense) I'm not in the US. I believe privacy law is a lot stricter in Europe.
> 2) [...] If you use a 10 character password and a different password on every website, you're very well protected.
I've started doing that recently (after the LinkedIn crack)
Thanks any for the advice.
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Post by seth August 19, 2012 (46 of 46)
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The Seventh Taylor said:
Fortunately (in this sense) I'm not in the US. I believe privacy law is a lot stricter in Europe.
> 2) [...] If you use a 10 character password and a different password on every website, you're very well protected.
I've started doing that recently (after the LinkedIn crack)
Thanks any for the advice.
Well, there lots of benefits to the data being publicly available.
1) Political Campaigns -- the benefits of removing anonymity from contributions is obvious, and posting the data on the internet is crucial. It used to be that if you wanted to look at campaign contributions you had to look at them in person (great example real world example is "All the Presidents Men" where they had to travel to Florida to look at contribution records there) . As a result, there wasn't a whole lot of scrutiny. Putting national politics aside, I have worked in elections on the state and city level, and having all the campaign contributors available online makes campaigns think long and hard about who they accept money from.
2) Property Records -- because of the nature of property law, it's important that these documents be easily accesible. It's also a good check on corruption that often occurs with property tax rates.
3) Court and Police Records -- it's pretty common sense and standard to do a background check on anyone you hire. And making the documents easily accesible saves you from having to hire a costly background check service.
What goes unreported in all of these fear mongering articles about identity theft is how targeted it is, and that it cannot be done alone with publicly available documents -- the victims has to have some kind of weakens. So with "tangled title," something far more serious than any of these "hackers stole my e-mail address stories -- it involves someone stealing your home -- the thieves usually prey on people who are in the hospital and are extremely sick, who don't have any family, so no ones sees what's going on with the title being stolen. This happened to a friend of mine, and the thief put a huge amount of work into it.
With the passwords, I know how hard it is to have a different one for every single page, but I cannot stress enough how important it is that the one you use for e-mail be unique.
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