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Thoughts on anonymity on the Internet?

Can't believe no one posted this - back in 1993, we all this pinned to our office doors. :)

Internet_dog.jpg
 
It's amazing how quickly people forgot about the "Never use your real name on the internet" rule.
And that you should never put out your phone number either, Fb and presumably Gooble plus require both of them on registration.

On Facebook it's gotten to become a DEMAND now, either let us have your mobile number or your credit card number or Screw You! we won't verify your account!

I would like it however if Google just by default not allow searching for people's names and addresses, basically only search works for looking up products services information in general (Like Wikipedia general info) and Celebrities, So that way it should help prevent it from being Stalkers Best Friend.

I've tested it out, all i need is your email address, using that most of the time it reveals your private FB profile, i get your real name and general location, with that i can search Google and get that person listed on College graduation files, and with that i can use the location of the College to search the whitepages for your phone number and it seems to work!
Without google i would only get half as far with the invasion.
 
Watchinufrap said:
It's amazing how quickly people forgot about the "Never use your real name on the internet" rule.
And that you should never put out your phone number either, Fb and presumably Gooble plus require both of them on registration.
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Google has never asked me for my phone number. It has it as I'm using Google Voice, but it's not public info. When I google my name, my Linked in profile comes up, but that's it. My dad's name actually comes up first (his middle name is my first name).

I would like it however if Google just by default not allow searching for people's names and addresses, basically only search works for looking up products services information in general (Like Wikipedia general info) and Celebrities, So that way it should help prevent it from being Stalkers Best Friend.
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I would hate this with a passion for so many reasons and I'm sure I would not be the first person to abandon Google for a better search engine if this happened.

I've tested it out, all i need is your email address, using that most of the time it reveals your private FB profile, i get your real name and general location, with that i can search Google and get that person listed on College graduation files, and with that i can use the location of the College to search the whitepages for your phone number and it seems to work!
Without google i would only get half as far with the invasion.
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I'm curious where you're doing this. I tried googling some friend's email addresses and came up with nothing. Tried Googling my email address and did not come up with anything on the first page related to me. All the information you say you can find was available to skip tracers and PI's long before the Internet was around. All that information is public information.
 
A.Nonymous said:
I've been kind of following the real name story on Google Plus and reading different articles about the controversy and I find it absolutely fascinating.

For those who haven't been paying attention because they have real lives that are actually interesting, Google Plus requires users to use their real names. You can't sign up under a handle or pseudonym.
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You still can signed up to G+ with a pseudonym by creating a new gmail to sign up in G+. You can put any name you want.

lordofthereef said:
So use a fake name (as in not your real one). Or... am I missing something?
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I don't think it matters if it's a real or fake name, if people see you as ____, then ____ is real in their eyes.

Vehtemas said:
And yeah I find it humorous that most people have multiple emails, one that is their actual name and one that is their fake/spam email.
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I have like 4 O.o I have different emails for different purposes :)

Watchinufrap said:
It's amazing how quickly people forgot about the "Never use your real name on the internet" rule.
And that you should never put out your phone number either, Fb and presumably Gooble plus require both of them on registration.

On Facebook it's gotten to become a DEMAND now, either let us have your mobile number or your credit card number or Screw You! we won't verify your account!
Click to expand...
Never did any of that when I signed up for either G+ or FB.

Other than my family and the government, my real name is not known or is common knowledge for most people. I use a nick name growing up and that's how most people refer to me as. On the net, I've taken a variation of that nick name.

'A rose by any other name smells just as sweet' -Shakespeare ;)

I'm not the type that have both an online and offline persona. I post what is relevant to the topic/area at hand.
 
Watchinufrap said:
I've tested it out, all i need is your email address, using that most of the time it reveals your private FB profile
Click to expand...

That would be a good trick, considering I've never used Facebook. :)

i get your real name and general location, with that i can search Google and get that person listed on College graduation files, and with that i can use the location of the College to search the whitepages for your phone number and it seems to work!
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I've saved you the trouble.... most of that is publically-shared in my Google profile because I choose to share it. :rolleyes:

I don't want to be anonymous, not out of ego but because I'm not anonymous in "real life". I'm 47 years old, have worked (and therefore paid tax & NI) for over half of that, vote, own a house, have owned several cars, and have even signed The Official Secrets Act. I couldn't hide if I tried! I've got my privacy, but I've made an informed choice as to what that is.
 
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Very interesting discussion! I too, see both sides of the coin. From my father's influence, I understand the threats that the world offers. On the other hand, I understand that with the direction technology is going, there are parts of it that you simply cannot take advantage of thoroughly without revealing something significant about yourself. It's the way it goes. For example, Beautiful Widgets requires a fine and a coarse GPS location permission if you're going to have it automatically tell you the weather where you're at and adjust the time for you. If you use that feature instead of manually specifying a location, you have to decide if you're going to trust the developers at Level-Up Studio not to track you down. Most of us agree, those guys probably don't care where you're at, they just want your $2.82 for their widgets lol.

Granted, you don't wear a mask at the grocery store, as mentioned earlier. However, there is a fear of the unknown that drives a desire for anonymity from the innocent. On the other side, there is a desire for anonymity from those who would do us harm. This, in return, drives a desire for anonymity from everyone.

If you're in a grocery store, and a robber comes in threatening everyone, well, there's nothing you can do about it except defend yourself or do what he says. You're without shield, so it's a moot comparison almost. Just the same though, all people see is a face, assuming you're not wearing a nametag. I see hundreds of faces daily and recognize not a one. If I was a criminal with intent to steal/harm randomly, I would be targeting based on the person's behavior--not what their face looks like.

On the internet, it's different. Immediately you have a shield. If you can prevent telling not only a couple hundred people at a walmart, but rather some percentage of 6 BILLION people who will see your content, who you are, you have a clear self-defense advantage. Where this becomes critical is in stories such as EarlyMon's.

One of the strangest (but yet logical) phenomenons of the internet is that when we can hide who we really are, we REALLY open up. It took me a few years in my early internet days (I'm 27, been lernin2internets since I was ~12/13) to learn to keep my mouth shut online with certain debates, because the person on the other end is going to open up just as much as I will, and I don't always have the personal energy for it.

As EarlyMon described, a simple comment about a personally held belief triggered a *strong* overreaction from a disturbed individual. In face to face interactions, chances are, EarlyMon would not have voiced that belief to someone he didn't know (I'm open to correction on that), and even if he did, that person might not have reacted the same way they did, because there would have been obvious immediate negative consequences. Anonymity empowered EarlyMon's aggressor. Just the same, anonymity empowers the innocent on the internet in the context of safety.

I believe the truth is this: on the internet, since anyone is far more likely to encounter someone's real personality--every facet of their disturbed nature--things that would be hidden in face-to-face interactions, then anonymity is the equalizer. It is the gun of the internet in a loose sense. Badguys will *always* choose anonymity. Even hacker groups use some alias name for their group when they claim responsibility for something they pull off. It's up to the goodguys to choose it also so we can guard against the badguys.

That said, I'm not the most solid practicer of anonymity anymore. There are too many on the internet that I know personally, and at times I can be too trusting of a person. Proof of that can be found by googling the name "Daniel Goodman", and guessing which guy is me. If you're smart and observant, you'll figure it out almost immediately. That said, there are a lot of dudes with my name...lol. At the same time, I try to be careful about which information I make available to everyone online. I lock down or do not provide my cell phone number as possible. Facebook can FOAD before they get my phone number, they don't need to verify my account. I also don't post my address publicly, although various websites like Amazon, Monoprice, etc. have it. As mentioned earlier in this thread, I use one Gmail to sign up for user accounts and attract spam, while I use the other one to deal with official business and real people close to me. Funny thing is, I delegate one to the other to make my life easier LOL.

In the end, if someone tracks me down and makes it to my home intending me harm, I'm armed. In the dorms, they'll be dealing with my fists and a can of really nasty pepper spray. At my real home, they'll be staring down the barrel of a handcannon. One isn't fun, the other is frightening, and both should handle the internet crazies pretty effectively.
 
teh_dude said:
As EarlyMon described, a simple comment about a personally held belief triggered a *strong* overreaction from a disturbed individual. In face to face interactions, chances are, EarlyMon would not have voiced that belief to someone he didn't know (I'm open to correction on that), and even if he did, that person might not have reacted the same way they did, because there would have been obvious immediate negative consequences. Anonymity empowered EarlyMon's aggressor. Just the same, anonymity empowers the innocent on the internet in the context of safety.
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Consider yourself politely corrected.

It's a free country, I say just what's on my mind and then cheerfully engage whomever might like to chat.

I'm quite certain the entire outcome would have been the same had that happened in walking life as it did on network life.

I've come under threat simply by dealing with people outside the net before, and I have no doubt - nor fear - that I will again. That's just life.

I simply prefer to limit the scope of dealing with crazies a bit.

When lots of people start calling you at your home for days on end and around the clock after a story like that gets out - to express support for me, or to express support for the nutjob (the aftermath of the episode was naturally made public, thanks again, internet buddies) then you'll get the idea that it's just not worth it.

Until then, srsly, and I mean this in the nicest way - relax and live a bit. Violence isn't the answer.
 
A.Nonymous said:
I really don't think Google or Facebook is trying to marginalize people at all.
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Neither do I.

I think they're trying to productize them.

Everything else flows from that - to the users G+ and FB are products - to Google and FB, the users are the product.

And they're the ones setting policy.
 
EarlyMon said:
Neither do I.

I think they're trying to productize them.

Everything else flows from that - to the users G+ and FB are products - to Google and FB, the users are the product.

And they're the ones setting policy.
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How am I a product in the eyes of a social networking site of which I am a member? In a similar light, could you extend that and say that in Phases' perspective, you and I are "products"? I don't understand what you mean.
 
teh_dude said:
How am I a product in the eyes of a social networking site of which I am a member? In a similar light, could you extend that and say that in Phases' perspective, you and I are "products"? I don't understand what you mean.
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You and I are what Google and FB sell to their customers. They tell their customers something like, "You want to advertise to a married, 28-35 yr old male with 2 kids, owns a foreign car and lives in the Northeastern US working in a white collar field? I know just the person."
 
Oh!!! Gotcha. For some reason the whole advertising revenue bit slipped my mind. Yes, even though without it there's a chance even AF would not exist lol.

EDIT: In that case, EarlyMon has an excellent point. The more information G/FB can convince us to share, the better the demographic information they have to share with advertisers, which ensures continued revenue. Nothing wrong with that principle per say, but I think a balance can be struck.

I had no idea whether or not Google was trying to enforce real name usage, because I already had my real name associated with both of my Google accounts ever since Gmail was new-fangled. Go figure.

Here's another perspective. Your real name is one thing. But think about it--it's going to take more than that to really identify you. Try, as I said in my novel up there, to search on my name, Daniel Goodman, and see what you find. According to Google, I'm the guy you're talking to here in north Texas. I'm also a lasik specialist in San Francisco, a lawyer in Illinois, and a folk rock artist in Brooklyn. I'm also http://www.dbgoodman.com/wp/. I used to be a psychic in the UK even.
 
Well true, they have a log of everything I've ever done with them, and I can only pray that they'll never use it against me, and that nobody who hacks their servers will use it against me.

I was primarily thinking of individuals though. Not even skip tracers, just, you know, goofballs like the freak you dealt with--although he seems to have found out quite a bit about you.
 
Vehtemas said:
Well, not difficult for Google or Facebook, it isn't super easy for the average joe, unless you have the email accounts/IP Addresses.
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I have a client who's a seedy, no-credit car lot. They sell cars to seedy clientele who don't pay and then they repo the cars and sell them again. They have three skip tracers on staff. (That right there tells you how seedy they are.) All of them tell me how they track down a large percentage of their clients just through Facebook. Their clients change their address/phone number all the time, but not their FB info.

(Side note - if I wasn't anonymous here I never would refer to my clients as "seedy" even though they are.)
 
I remember when a debt collector admitted to skiptracing me after I had evaded their calls for awhile with a simple number change (the number change was a service upgrade--debt collector evasion was a side benefit), and the female on the phone (any other name just sounds too respectful to me) admitted it somewhat arrogantly. Took care of the debt eventually but I could've handled it a lot better. *shakes head* bad memory.
 
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