Publication of Personal Information

[Acera]

Permit required to put in a thermostat?! un freaking believable. I would never submit to that. Just put the darn thing in

Does not matter, permit least of your concerns, he probably just put a corporate surveillance system in his house and did not even know it.

If it is one of those cool Nest or the more advanced Honeywell RedLink thermostats. They are reporting your private usage information to the power company, just like the smart meters that everyone has been strong-armed into getting. They sneak by the privacy laws with 'implied consent' and now have an open connection into your lifestyle. It is amazing what you can learn about a person/family by their power usage. Police are using the information to find grow houses, identifying home businesses to enforce business licenses, and other things. Plus the power company makes money selling your personal information to third parties!! All of this without you even knowing or worse agreeing to it in a normal manner.

Welcome to the sell your private information age

 

[Ole Cowboy]

San Antonio and Bexar County, generally, are governed (ruled) by far left wing ideologues. They want to control every aspect of your life. Since they control over 50 percent of the vote that depends on government hand outs, they refuse to recognize the productive minority in our community.

I once thought about moving away. Not anymore. Now, it is a fight that I will fight until my dying day.

California got $#@!ed up because not enough people stood up to the fascist leftists. It started in San Francisco, then spread to LA and on to Sacramento.

I'll ride the damned bus and go to the Alamo armed. I'll put brush in my trash bin. I'll put plastic bags loose in my recycle bin. I'll pour used motor oil on my fence line to kill weeds. I'll water my yard whenever I damned well want to. I won't neuter my intact male Labrador, and I sure as hell won't pay for a breeder's license, nor will I pay for an ordinary pet license.

I call or e-mail the mayor and my councilman every time I get stuck in traffic, hit a pot hole, or run into traffic lights that are not synchronized.

I will harvest part of the over-populated deer herds that overwhelm my neighborhood, and I shop in neighboring counties to starve Bexar County and San Antonio of my share of their sales taxes.

Even State Government is so bloated, they forgot I have a septic system, and have not told me to pump the septic tank in over five years. Damn, I know when the tank needs to be pumped! Not at some arbitrary five-year interval some schmuck at dot.state thinks is required.

Just do your little bit of civil disobedience. There ain't enough cops to bust us all if we overwhelm them with minor acts of resistance.

Not sure why you are being so KIND to the RADICAL EXTREME left wing, commie socialists.

FYI: The Communists established a major cell in San Antonio right after WWII. The premier organization that knew the worlds secrets was not the CIA, but it was the OSI which had its HQ in San Antonio.

 

[Acera]

Just saw this, thought it would fit in to this discussion, talk about a privacy invasion!!

Russian website allows webcam hackers to spy on British families in their own homes | UK | News | Daily Express

Britain issue warning over hacked webcams, AsiaOne Digital News

Russian spies use your computer to watch you at home then post photos online | Daily Mail Online

 

[Army 1911]

I have been known to not give phone numbers to any level of government. There is no requirement to own a phone and I tell them that if they need to contact me, the Post Office will gladly deliver their missive.

 

[35Remington]

City records are public information.

TXI: Thank you. Do you know whether it would be worth my while to pursue removal of some or all of my information from those records?

Permit required to put in a thermostat?! un freaking believable. I would never submit to that. Just put the darn thing in

It was one of those energy saving thermostats. Our energy provider was offering them for free, and I thought it would be neat to be able to control it while away from home. I didn't realize they would be publicizing my personal information as a result.

 

[Acera]

It was one of those energy saving thermostats. Our energy provider was offering them for free.....................................

You are old enough to know that nothing is 'free'...................................

They know now, when you are there and not, when you wake up and go to bed, good guess about how many people live there, they know when you have guests, know when you go on vacation,, etc. Good luck.

 

[Southpaw]

Just saw this, thought it would fit in to this discussion, talk about a privacy invasion!!

Russian website allows webcam hackers to spy on British families in their own homes | UK | News | Daily Express

Britain issue warning over hacked webcams, AsiaOne Digital News

Russian spies use your computer to watch you at home then post photos online | Daily Mail Online

I was checking it out yesterday and came upon this cam in San Antonio, it made me laugh

View Foscam camera in United States, San Antonio

(FYI-sometimes the cams show, sometimes they don't for me, you may or may not have similar issues)

 

[Savage805]

Over 300 matches. Yeah Baby!!! Business is good.

 

[35Remington]

Just got off the phone with CoSA. Under the Texas Public Information Act, they are required to make available records such as building permits. They declined my request to remove the information.

It's not my name and address that bothers me. It's my phone number. Lesson learned, and I will be using non-primary phone numbers when prompted by government officials in the future.

 

[SA_Steve]

And he is named in the LLC and a simple search of the Texas Secretary of State website will find him. lol

not without an address and phone it won't, takes even more than that actually on an informal query

their registered query account might allow it but google does not index their database

 

[winchster]

Google voice number for Craigslist

 

[benenglish]

Just saw this, thought it would fit in to this discussion, talk about a privacy invasion!!

I'm going to try not to sound like a jerk on this. Really, I am. What follows is the best I can do.

People who buy IP-based security cams and slap them on the wall without bothering to configure them are idiots who are inviting people to spy on them. There have been indexing sites in existence for years that have thousands of links to live cams. Those lists are compiled by pinging all the IPs in the assigned ranges, trying the default password that shipped with the device (or, in the early days, there may have been no password at all), and then listing anything that responds. Ultimately, it's a pretty boring hobby. You can find a cam that's trained on the front entrance of a home anywhere in the world and stare into another persons life 24 hours a day, if you like. The most likely outcome is that you see them go to work and come home for a total of 30 seconds of movement every 24 hours.

What we have here are dumb hackers who guide dumb voyeurs to dumb webcams set up by dumb owners. All of it is a gigantic bore and it only makes the news when someone wants to sell newspapers by trying to start a new moral panic. A pox on all their houses.

 

[Acera]

So basically Ben you are saying, if it is easy to steal then it is ok???? Lets all blame the victims.

 

[benenglish]

So basically Ben you are saying, if it is easy to steal then it is ok???? Lets all blame the victims.

No, I'm not saying that. It's definitely not OK but it's just too easy.

In TGT terms, I'm saying that if someone puts their gun safe in the garage then leaves the door open all day so it's clearly visible to everyone who drives by, they have more faith in humanity than I do.

What's sad about this is that the sellers of the cams don't want the buyers to understand the downside. There ought to be a big, red warning card inside every box that says "Change the password on this device or the whole world can see what the camera sees!" But that would scare off some buyers. At least things have improved since the early days when the devices were often not protected in any way, by design. It wouldn't take much effort for the designers of these things to force a change from the default password at initial activation but that might reduce their profit by $0.02/unit. No respectable (and, yes, I do mean that ironically) Chinese manufacturer would leave that kind of money on the table.

The saving grace in all this is that if you actually visit some of the indexing sites and try to look into people lives, there are so many available cams that you generally get bored looking at empty rooms and don't bother with it after the first try. The people that obsessively monitor these cams are voyeurs, peeping toms. The only difference nowadays is that they come to you through a wire instead of hiding in your bushes but creeps like that have always been around.

 

[Southpaw]

No, I'm not saying that. It's definitely not OK but it's just too easy.

In TGT terms, I'm saying that if someone puts their gun safe in the garage then leaves the door open all day so it's clearly visible to everyone who drives by, they have more faith in humanity than I do.

What's sad about this is that the sellers of the cams don't want the buyers to understand the downside. There ought to be a big, red warning card inside every box that says "Change the password on this device or the whole world can see what the camera sees!" But that would scare off some buyers. At least things have improved since the early days when the devices were often not protected in any way, by design. It wouldn't take much effort for the designers of these things to force a change from the default password at initial activation but that might reduce their profit by $0.02/unit. No respectable (and, yes, I do mean that ironically) Chinese manufacturer would leave that kind of money on the table.

The saving grace in all this is that if you actually visit some of the indexing sites and try to look into people lives, there are so many available cams that you generally get bored looking at empty rooms and don't bother with it after the first try. The people that obsessively monitor these cams are voyeurs, peeping toms. The only difference nowadays is that they come to you through a wire instead of hiding in your bushes but creeps like that have always been around.

Agreed. I lasted about 3 minutes and was back here toot sweet!! LOL!!

 

[Acera]

First no I am not the type to explore those options in looking into folks lives, so I don't personally know how easy it is. I have to rely on others to tell me it's that easy. Second I hate making excuses for criminals, it has led to a downgrade in our society when people give them passes for their bad behavior. In my mind it is the criminals fault, not the victims. We all can't be bright and have the knowledge and skills to comprehensively operate the tools we buy sometimes.

Not saying I am a saint or anything, once when I was real young (16 or so), I found out the garage door opener way down the street had the same code as my parents opener. Opened their garage door on my way home from work late at night a few times. Was that right? Oh, heck no. Those poor folks probably had quite a scare being woken up from a sleep with that sound at 2 am. Would I have blamed them if I had been caught?? No, again I took/take responsibilities for my actions. Bet if I had driven more of the town, I would have found a lot of openers whose owners had not changed the dip switches from original settings......well we were one of them families Am I proud of it? No, and would not do it now or like if persons in my circle did similar things.

If somebody steals the gun safe out of your garage, it is on them. I think most of better protect our stuff to avoid the hassle of picking up the pieces. Should the owner blame themselves? No, the thief should be blamed.

 

[benenglish]

First no I am not the type ...

I agree with pretty much everything you have to say in this post. However, when you say

...I hate making excuses for criminals...

and I go back and look at what I wrote, it seems clear that I wasn't very clear and didn't express my feelings correctly. I really wasn't making excuses for criminal activity but I sure sounded like I was, didn't I? Sorry about that.

We all can't be bright and have the knowledge and skills to comprehensively operate the tools we buy sometimes.

Interesting notion. How much knowledge should we reasonably expect a person to have before we blame them when things go wrong? I remember transitioning over to computers in the office from pure paper. Many of the oldsters at the time were adamant that "I don't type. That's what the secretary is for." and they refused to touch a computer for the rest of their careers. Nowadays, someone who refuses to touch a computer because they think it's beneath them will have a hard time getting hired in most jobs. As a society, we've decided that the willingness to use a keyboard is a basic skill, akin to dressing right, showing up on time, and not cursing in front of the customers.

Do we have a right to expect people who buy password-protected devices that connect to the internet to know that those passwords need to be changed? Perhaps not universally, yet. But, IMO, soon.

If somebody steals the gun safe out of your garage, it is on them. I think most of better protect our stuff to avoid the hassle of picking up the pieces. Should the owner blame themselves? No, the thief should be blamed.

You bring up a good point. My analogy was poor. Taking physical property is different than looking at someone when they don't expect to be looked at.

 

[SIG_Fiend]

If you guys check out the Black Hat and Defcon channels on YouTube, there are a whole lot of videos covering the topic of IP cam and general security cam vulnerabilities. It's a real eye-opener. Here's one that covers a variety of common camera models. Some of it is a bit technical and might put some of you to sleep, but there's some good info in it too:






https://www.youtube.com/user/BlackHatOfficialYT

https://www.youtube.com/user/DEFCONConference

 

[txinvestigator]

TXI: Thank you. Do you know whether it would be worth my while to pursue removal of some or all of my information from those records?

I don't know if you can...

We don't have a home, landline phone, but we have the number assigned to us. We have it non-published and non-Listed. I give that number to any organization like in your situation.

 

[Mexican_Hippie]

Yes, if you use any home automation or webcams you had better understand IT security. There are some pretty significant risks.