x x

[Psylo]

x

[Marcel]

... but then I would have nothing to piss & moan about.

 

The topic of the weather has worked for most of humanity for thousands of years.

How about this rain, eh?!

[Psylo]

x

[Chef]

I like this thread

[Rabelais]

Cross pollination of private information between websites, email accnts etc does concern me. I have two emails, one for doing frivolous stuff online, another for more official stuff - hotmail and gmail.

I am careful never to cross the two accounts, imagine my surprise when Gmail randomly asked me recently if I would like to receive my Hotmail accnt emails through my Gmail account. I have been raking my brain but the only thing I can think of is that databases are swapping information.

As for Facebook hate. It really depends how one uses it right? I think one of the best things one can do is not use their real name when they sign up.

[Psylo]

x

[Psylo]

x

[chnt]

i am wondering which post to like, might try flipping a coin

[chnt]

i am wondering which post to like, might try flipping a coin

[Psylo]

x

[chnt]

love you

[qualia]

i tried logging into one of my gmails with tor, so they locked me out and asked me to enter my mobile to unlock it. i sent them an email saying i have no mobile and the unlocked it.

[Torsten]

don't use technology just because its free unless you understand it!

seriously, your original posts is so full of misconceptions that you really should not have a FB account and should have closed it when it fell out of use. FB has a policy of being as public as possible, so every time they make changes they default to the most public setting they can get away with legally. It used to be worse a couple of years ago.

FB does reciprocal log ins with other sites, so if you're logged into FB you can also access various music or media sites - even this forum if you set it up that way. So chances are you are logged into a reciprocating site [or at least have a cookie set] which thus allows you immediate access to FB.

I know what FB's aim is so I never allow any such information exchange.

FB always requires log ins for security related tasks such as account deletion or change of main security settings, email, etc.

As for your phone number request, ironically if you had provided this you would have been able to reset your password even if you no longer have the registered email address ;)

Your first priority should be to get access to your account by resetting your password somehow. Things should not be a drama after that.

[Marcel]

Just for the sake of arguement, let's discuss the following: Why is it that we're so worried about our privacy? Don't get me wrong; all this really fucking bothers me too, but if I sit down in the dark, naked and honest, I can't really remember what it is that I'm so flustered about.

Google knows my mobile number. Facebook knows my browsing habits. Itunes knows that I prefer Morton Feldman to Shostakovich. So? In the case of the average Joe, who isn't a political dissident, who isn't a drug baron, who isn't a spy or a hacker or a media pirate, what is it that he or she will lose? When I talk to people about this they say to me: "C'mon hippie. There's no conspiracy! Facebook isn't going to tell the FBI that I smoked a joint in 2006! They're not going to steal my bank details... So they do a little clandestine market research... So I get a little more spam every once in a while... Big whoop! It's not worth all the tears and fury!"

What should I tell them? What is the threat to the average Jane and Joe? What is facebook's aim?

I'm not trying to be facetious here. I'm just trying to step back and get some help spelling out the whole issue at hand, and the conceptual/moral basis upon which it is built.

[Pedro Williams]

is looking for the poke button

[Torsten]

Marcel, I treat all online communications as public or at least as 'not private', so none of this affects me either and hence I have no real issue with FB's commercial goals. The things that concern me in regards to privacy are not really about what our system is like at the moment. It's more about what it might develop into. In the USA you can be refused entry into the country if you have ever spoken out publically in favour of taking drugs and proclaimed your own drug use. In many muslim or african countries you can be arrested for being gay. In tasmania having gay sex was briefly outlawed 15 years ago. In germany it was recently revealed that the border protection agency spent more time keeping tabs of greens and lefties than of nazis and skinheads. When NSW special branch was dissolved with apologies and compensation a couple of decades ago it became apparent just how insignificant you could be and still be a person of interest to the snoopers. You don't have to be all that extreme to be of interest to various government and commercial interests and while governments will always get what they want, at least we can keep commercial interests out of our private lives.

The other thing is simply annoyance. I keep my mobile number pretty private so that i don't get too many spam calls [that's what the landline with answering machine is for]. So at what point will FB start sending me text messages or automated phone calls now that they have my number and think they know my shopping habits and interests? I weighed up giving them the phone number for a long time, but in the end decided security was more important than privacy in this case.

I lived a very private life for 15 years and would have never considered something like FB 10 years ago. I didn't even sign up to webmail because I didn't trust them, instead running my own server. The thing is, I never whinged about webmail or about forum or about all the other services that were being provided that I didn't feel were appropriate. That's what puzzles me about everyone carring on about FB. If you don't like it then don't use it! It is not an essential part of communications like a phone or an ISP, but simply a free service that we can chose to use as we see fit.

I am very much for privacy, but have no sympathy for people who complain about using what was never designed to be private.

[Alice]

Identity theft is a concern for me. It is much more common than most people perceive.

This is a problem for most internet activity especially forums and facebook/myspace. For example, I once googled a members name on another forum who's seemed familiar and I thought I might have gone to school with. It was a *login* type name eg Bob_123. 10 mins later I knew his real name, saw photo's of him and his girlfriend, photo's of his car and numberplates, what suburb he lived in, what the outside of his house looked like, what his backyard looked like, what school he went to, where he went on holidays last month, where he worked and where he used to work and why he quit, who his close friends were, a picture of the tattoo on his arm, etc etc, all from myspace info, the other forums he went to and used the same very distinctive username, and from online photo albums he had linked to that were public. 10 mins. This is scary shit and I think a real concern.

[Sallubrious]

When you open a facebook account you agree to your computer being legally hacked. The same goes with most software, if you ever bother to read the waiver when you install software that would be obvious.

Many software packages install LSO's that are really legal spyware, they log everything you do and report back to base, that's how details are cross linked most of the time.

Macromedia has some nasty LSO's that enable someone to remotely hijack your webcam and microphone. By the way most porn sites won't work without flash enabled so - who's watching who

LSO's can't be deleted like normal cookies either they stay there and log everything you do.

All these problems with cloud based services where you log on and are already logged on are government bots crawling the cloud through U.S. split server rooms, one branch goes to the cloud the other goes to the NSA - a new fake you .

Windows and Mac are built from the ground up to be surreptitiously accessed and so is Linux these days.

Linux now runs a deamon that logs everything you do and keeps it in a central place so the NSA can get in and out fast, see Zeitgeist deamon.

Don't kid yourself - nothing is secure anymore if you do anything on a computer someone is watching.

[myco]

.

Don't kid yourself - nothing is secure anymore if you do anything on a computer someone is watching.

 

im sorry but no

no one is watching you no one cares wat your doing the government is not watching everything you do on your computer

that is just ridiculous and pointless

if you have a facebook and are really that paranoid about people finding you on there use a false name

call yourself fukin billy bob who gives a fuck

if your making an email acount and it asks for your phone number put a fake number

thier not out there checking this shit

facebook googlemail watever no one cares if you put your name as fuck wit and say your phone number is 123456789

as for spyware use malwarebytes

people are far to paranoid about the internet and thier privacy on the internet

someone said earlier about being able to find out alot of info about someone based soley from an email address or a username

this is very true i've used this many times before i had someone steal one of my business logo's recently

and use it on thier own website

and from one username on the website i tracked that person back to thier own personal facebook acount

where i could see pictures of them thier real name, age everything

if your really that paranoid about this kind of stuff then like i say make fake names that only your friends know

make everything on your facebook as private as possible and you'll be fine

[Sallubrious]

You obviously don't know much about the internet myco.

All traffic going into and out of America goes through split server rooms, where the signal is effectively split in half. One part of the signal is diverted to the NSA and scanned for keywords and phrases. Whether they give a fuck or not is another thing all together.

The NSA will never divulge this information but they do give leads to other law enforcement agencies, that's why they need to steal computers during raids to get physical evidence.

Using a false name won't do much as ISP's keep records and openly give them to police whenever they are asked. To get an internet service you need to give them details so it's hard to be truly anon.

Malware bytes will remove most LSO's but you have to run it between every page you view or they will just come straight back. Sending the LSO's to a null device is much more effective.

Google, facebook, ebay, amazon and yahoo amongst others are US based ventures so almost everything is going through the split server rooms and being monitored.

If you have a facebook account you have given permission for them to use your data and build a profile on you.

If you think you are protected by firewalls and other such nonsense then consider this.

Which port is open for the java program that is running the chat on your facebook page and what data is flowing through that port ?

If you haven't disassembled the program (which is illegal) then you have no way of knowing what that java program is doing.

I'm not paranoid and looking over my shoulder, I know they are there and they can

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_packet_inspection

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/homefront/interviews/klein.html

[Torsten]

myco, you are correct that in MOST cases the government doesn't care. However, if you do by innocent circumstance become a target then you will suddenly feel very different about these issues. There was an example in my circle of friends a few years ago where the simple fact that they had some sort of contact with a criminal [and 95% of them had no idea he was] led to them being caught up in the investigation. Say for example you were friends with the supercop Stanton of the NSW crime commission, but had no idea he was importing tonnes of ephedrine, do you think your privacy would be respected just because you lead a boring life?

You'd be absolutely amazed at what the cops come up with after some operations and how easy it is to get caught in the net even if you're not doing much [or anything].

But like I said, the government gets the information they want anyway. What bugs me more are the commercial interests. It's not happening yet, but there is nothing stopping FB or google from selling commercially valuable profile information such as what your search for, what you buy and what you comment on. This information is worth billions to advertisers because it allows them to target their ads better and hence trim wastage. It could also be valuable to your future employer. 15 years ago everyone said that those who feared forum posts could haunt them in the future were paranoid nuts [there are several such discussionon the very forum in the early days]. Now it is standard practice for HR of major companies to google and FB the name of prospective employees to see what they've been up to. you have to not just think about what is possible at the moment, but also what is likely to be possible in a few years. My worry would be about health insurance [companies are not likely to offer you the same rate if they have indications of severely unhealthy lfiestyle], transplants [in many countries you can't get a transplant if you have a history of drug use], etc

[Distracted]

What bugs me more are the commercial interests. It's not happening yet, but there is nothing stopping FB or google from selling commercially valuable profile information such as what your search for, what you buy and what you comment on. This information is worth billions to advertisers because it allows them to target their ads better and hence trim wastage.

 

I thought facebook already did that, hence why people get so mad when they advertise to teenagers who input all the information and don't know they're being played. The ads are definitely targeted to you depending on what information you provide facebook, ie if you're single they'll show you dating websites, if you're engaged and a woman they'll show wedding dresses or homeloans, if you're married they'll show you insurance, etc.

I deleted everything I could from facebook in my real name for fear of the future... hell my name was tied to many festivals/gigs that may be underground right now but anyone with half a brain could make an association about me going to these gigs.

When I started on the internet it was effectively anonymous and parents would always tell us NEVER to give ANY real information out to strangers, not even our first name. Now kids all have their real names proudly displayed next to all the stupid shit they get upto that should be kept private.

2 years ago was a real wakeup call to me after finding my real name and credit card linked to my hotmail account... all because i bought something from xbox live using the same email address. fucking scary imo.

I'm not so fussed about being caught posting about anything unlawful right now... i'm more concerned about posting political views that could be viewed in the future by a not so friendly government.

[qualia]

When I started on the internet it was effectively anonymous and parents would always tell us NEVER to give ANY real information out to strangers, not even our first name. Now kids all have their real names proudly displayed next to all the stupid shit they get upto that should be kept private.

you know, what i don't understand is people who post their mobile numbers to those facebook pages where theres nothing but a massive list of mobile phone numbers? doesn't make sense.

[myco]

well put it this way unless you guys are terrorists or part of some worldwide drug smuggling ring

or something your not gonna have the cops nockin on ya door over wat you've been looking at on the internet

there is no giant government organisation with thousands of people sitting there monitoring BILLIONS of internet users

the cops take computers when they do raids so that they can search your hard drives and shit for info on wat you've been doing on your computer they dont take them as "physical evidence" of something an isp told them thats ridiculous

they take your computer to find out wat you've been doing on there

and i bet you 90% of people on here that have had thier houses raided for any reason at all especially when its drug related

will tell you they dont take your computer or bother getting your computer looked at i know a few people who have been in trouble for shit like this before and not one of them had thier computer checked out over it

unless your an extremely high profile criminal or are getting busted over some sick pedo kiddy porn shit they're not gonna give a shit about your computer

you can also get software that constantly changes your ip address aswell so you cant be trackd back to your own computer

this is an essential hackers tool

how do you think all these crazy hackers get away with half of the dodgy shit they do on the if it was that simple to be tracked down on the net no body's gonna be hacking government websites police departments ect.

just think about how many billions of people there are on the internet the cops and government arent worried about little old you

they arent gonna be nockin on ya door cos you posted a picture of yourself smoking a bong on facebook

i wouldnt do that for other reasons family and stuff on ya facebook you know

but seriously dont get so paranoid about things like this

[Sallubrious]

Myco

I'm not going to get into a battle of wits with someone who is clearly unarmed.

Perhaps if English was your first language it would be sporting but no-one's going to get anywhere like this.