Publication of Personal Information

[Ole Cowboy]

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.

Concur and quoted for the truth.

And now we have the "cloud". That is great, take all your ultra private info and load it into the cloud, which is being hosted by some company and protected by their firewalls etc etc. For something safer, take all your bank statements and nekkid pics of your wife and girlfriend and hand them out on a clothes line, less folks will have access...ok maybe not quite that bad but you are getting my point.

I personally do not use the cloud and I was doing cloud computing in my data centers in the late 90's, but I was the schema architect, and it was a TELCO grade and I was able to give 5, 9's SLA.

Before you jump on the cloud you need to look before you leap...

 

[35Remington]

Argh

 

[benenglish]

For something safer, take all your bank statements and nekkid pics of your wife and girlfriend and hand them out on a clothes line, less folks will have access...ok maybe not quite that bad but you are getting my point.

I disagree. I think it's is literally true that hanging your private information on the clothes line in your back yard is more secure than sending stuff into the cloud.

I remember a user getting angry, then teary-eyed, then nearly apoplectic when I told him his work email wasn't private. I have no idea what was so sensitive in his emails. He just kept repeating over and over that management had promised him that his email account not accessible except by him. I know what they were trying to communicate; his boss couldn't snoop in his email. However, he just about went off his nut when he realized that I, as the sysadmin, could read his email and that I would copy it and turn the results over to any Inspector who made a proper request.

I said all that to make this point: Any data housed remotely can be accessed by the caretakers of that data and anyone who can impersonate them. In practice, that's a bunch of people. Data on the clothes line in the back yard requires a thief to scale a fence. The people willing to do that are few.

So, yeah, the clothes line is more secure. Literally.

 

[Acera]

The ratio of a criminals intelligence vs. the victims intelligence should not factor into the equation, but it does. We all would take pity on the child with an Intellectual disability if some smart kid cons him out of his lunch money. But why don't we do it when the ratio of intelligence is closer or even reversed? That person is smart enough to know better? Really? Some folks intellectual abilities lie in vastly different areas.

The average IQ in the US is 98, that barely makes the top 20 in the world. Now think about that half the people are below that number. Half of the adults read at below a 9th grade reading level, that is 120 million people in the USA! Seems to me the trick is not finding less intelligent people, they are half of who we are as a populace. One issue you run into is that we seem to hang out where the numbers are a bit askew. Would I bet that the members of this board fit exactly into the same demographics as the rest of the nation?? Oh heck no, I think we are heavily biased here on the top side.

On an intellectual level I can see how to explain how these things happen, but I can't justify them on a moral or ethical level.

I take an example of when this board got hacked, lot of smart people got hoodwinked by a lot smarter (or if you disagree with that assessment, lot more cleverer, or skilled people). It was wrong irregardless.



(for fun put askew in a google search and see what it does to your screen.)

 

[benenglish]

(for fun put askew in a google search and see what it does to your screen.)

Searching for "do a barrel roll" is even more fun.

 

[Acera]

Searching for "do a barrel roll" is even more fun.

Ha, pretty cool

Is there a list of these things??

 

[karlac]

Ha, pretty cool

Is there a list of these things??

Here's some:

Google search: 15 hidden features - Telegraph

 

[TheDan]

when I applied for a permit to have a garage sale.

You did what? bwahahahaha...


I googled my phone# and see lots of people had it before me, including a couple businesses. Explains all the crap calls I get, I guess. It really sucks that the city released your info like that, but unfortunately its all public record.

Even though we met in public, that guy now knows who I am, and where I live, thanks to CoSA.

If they took down your plate number they can figure all that stuff out, as well. Just have to pay for it.

Just do your little bit of civil disobedience.

scofflaw... I approve!

 

[TXAZ]

Welcome to the new "no privacy world".

 

[txinvestigator]

The average IQ in the US is 98, that barely makes the top 20 in the world. Now think about that half the people are below that number.

Then isn't 98 the median, not the average?

 

[Booyah]

Ha, pretty cool Is there a list of these things??

Search for "Google easter eggs" and you can find dozens of cool things Google will do.

 

[London]

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

If it's in Texas, yeah. I've been told Nevada doesn't require a name to start a corporation.