Internet security

[onlymark]

My daughters are now getting quite into Facebook. I let them do so but I'm aware of the problems that could arise, though they have their heads screwed on right and I don't really anticipate much of anything happening. I have adjusted their privacy settings though.
Anyway, just to creep you out a little I undertook an exercise this morning and gave myself a time limit of an hour.
The purpose was to find out as much as I could about someone on here.

You may ask, why would anyone want to find out about 'me' anyway? From all the people in the world who are on the internet, why would anyone bother with 'me'?
The point was though, not why, but if. I have no idea of your personal circumstances but there is no logic to some people who take offence, want to stalk, just get pleasure from bullying or making life difficult for some random person.
The thought of identity theft comes to mind as well, but I was more interested in what could be found out in a short space of time.
Creepy, I know, of me to try this, but it was a bit of an eye opener.

You may feel, 'so what if they do know', you may not, but what did I find out?
I obviously wont give the the details of the person and they can be assured that they've all been wiped off anyway, it was nothing personal. I am trustworthy. But what I did find out was-

full name
birthday
address
photos of their abode with associated neighbours', type of window dressings and abode details, garden, general area etc etc
phone number
two email addresses
occupation
place/dates of holidays
photos of the person showing physical differences over time
Car details
Names of close relatives
(car driven by close relative (I think anyway and I can have a guess which one))
Several not quite so close relatives
Type of pets and names.

So, creepiness ended, resume as you were.

[Deleted]

Actually, it's no different from what a good private detective could find out in 48 hours using classic methods in the old days. So the main change is that it can be done much faster now by somebody on the other side of the planet. As long as the talents of people like you do not extend to hacking bank accounts or turning on webcams remotely, I am one of those people who does not worry about such things. I am even still listed in the phone directory.

[onlymark]

You know all that money you've come, and are coming, in to?
Have you checked you bank account recently?

[Deleted]

Weirdly enough, I have 15 different accounts in 4 different banks, so it would probably be more trouble to clean me out than it's worth.

And no, I have not received my 44 months of salary yet!

[onlymark]

You want to try changing both those passwords you use though.
Having one as 'confitdecanard' is a bit obvious.

[mich64]

We just had this conversation yesterday at Sunday dinner. A cousin of my husband and his wife also attended. Their daughter is currently on student exchange in Blois, France. The mother is kind of angry with her daughter and her husband. She is upset because her daughter has over 1,000 plus "friends" on Face Book, she is mad at her husband for not helping her stop this.

She believes because she posts pictures so often and tags them that someone out there might be crazy would be able to track her down while she is away. She was quite concerned and I felt sad for her being so upset about things that are so out of her control. I just kept thinking, it does not matter if she has 10 friends or 1,000, if that person is out there, it does not matter. I kept my opinions to myself as she was quite upset and after all, I am not a mother and have no right questioning one.

I am still listed in the phone book, I have many passwords for different sites and do my best to what I know to try to be safe.

Cheers!
Mich

[bixaorellana]

I'm really glad you brought this up, Mark. I believe your girls are @14, right? Anyway, they've passed the 13-year-old limit Facebook sets. That limit of course if fairly meaningless, since we can claim to be any age we want on fb.

My nine-year-old niece lives with her mother, not with my brother, her dad. Anyway, she -- or maybe her idiot mother -- recently set up a facebook account. I wrote to my brother & told him about the age limit, plus advised him that there's some fairly rough stuff on fb and about the dangers of people who stalk children. No response. Maybe it's mean, but I have not answered the kid's Friend request. And, since I'm not her fb friend, I'm aware of exactly how open her account is. In the meantime, my brother has finally opened his own fb account. He's having a great time reconnecting with old school friends, army buddies, etc. Is it wrong of me to hope that something shocks him into being concerned about his little daughter having access to fb?

My son posted an old photo booth strip of himself & a friend, occasioning much "rough male humor" from other old friends on fb. He finally asked them to tone it down, saying "the kids might see this". By kids, he meant his young women cousins. Okay, they've probably already been exposed to stuff like that, but still.

Recently my brother was tagged with a picture of our little sister in high school, which he passed on to me. I sent it via email to my sister, with the subject line, "Why you need to be on facebook". Here is part of her response:
I'm a weirdly private person, partly as a result of having been stalked all those years by that strange client. That was a long time ago but honestly it still keeps me hesitant.

She was stalked so heavily that she was forced to move house, have different unlisted phone numbers, etc. several times over a period of years. Can you imagine how easy it would be for a similar creep to find someone with all the help fb gives?

Mich, I don't think your dinner companion is over-reacting. I have quite a few fb "friends" from when I used to play mafia wars. However, they are on my fake name account (also against fb rules, by the way). I'm horrified by how many of those people use their real names, addresses, etc. Some of them even have cute little maps showing the location of their homes.

Mark's example should be a wake-up call to people sharing too much personal information. It's long been known that thieves mine the obituaries to find out when a funeral will take place, i.e., when there's likely to be no one at home. Surely they've applied those same methods to using info easily found on the net.

I enjoy facebook and understand the pleasure people get with keeping in touch on the fly. However, I strongly feel that people wanting to post pictures of their little children, or discuss vacation plans, or anything else revealing of their personal lives should have their real-name accounts protected as much as possible & should make sure that the info can't be seen by "friends of friends", as facebook puts it.

[onlymark]

By the way bixa, and I'm sure you realise I'm not on fb (was, but deleted account a few years ago), but one pause for thought is that absolutely none of the info I found was using facebook. I didn't even check it, it was all found elsewhere and not from any specialist sites or sites that require payment.
So if I had used facebook as well........?

k2 is right in that all the info could've been found out by 'old methods' years ago in a longer time frame but I doubt if anyone would really bother. Now it is so different, who knows? I know I have more out there than I'm comfortable with but my brother is even more cautious. He doesn't go on the internet at all, has no email, fb or anything account.

Mind you, being wanted for treason and hiding out in a foreign country does hold him back a little.

[rikita]

what i found kind of creepy: when posted pictures of my little brother or other kids on flickr, i at first used to tag them also with the words "child", "kids" etc. - until i noticed that these pictures have many more views than any of my other photos (like, if all the photos posted at around the same time had about 30 views, those would have 300. and it wasn't because kids are cute, else photos tagged "kitten" or "puppy" would have the same result... well, stopped using that tag very quickly - i also try to keep my real name away from my internet forum name, and my flickr account - though i am not sure if it might nto be possible to find out anyway...

anyway, their policy of "no fake names" (even if that is often broken) is one of the things i dislike about facebook.

[Deleted]

Well, they don't seem to think that Kerouac is a fake name so far.

[rikita]

yeah well it is not so much about that you can't cheat (a lot of people i know do that) but just about the fact that they even have such a rule ...

[Deleted]

I agree. What are they thinking? (I suppose they are thinking that we should pretend that we are living in a perfect world -- honest people have nothing to fear, and any bad people can be found immediately because naturally they are using their real names, too. )