Breaking radio silence: Stalking

“I need to make something clear. I am not a stalker and I don't have the patience for it. Nor am I a computer privacy guru/freak. But so far here are the kinds of things I have done which has made it simple. Google the username. Lots of people use the same user name all over the web. It may not be smart, but it happens. Google the e-mail addy. Often sometimes the e-mail addy leads to a website like a myspace page. The social networking sites can be a treasure trove. Look through the pics. I have a pic of my car on webshots. The rear plate is clear as a bell. Easy pickings for someone who wants to find me.

It is amazing what people will say in their writings. Who they work for. What hours they work. Where they eat lunch. What their kids names are. Where the kids go to school.
Where they live. Pics of folks houses abound on the web. The list goes on and on.

HOI I didn't try very hard because those easy protals didn't lead me anywhere. I am not going to go back and read your trip reports and that kind of thing because I don't care that much about finding you. :?)

I googled a colleague one time and found a newspaper article which identified her by name, neighborhood (she is on town council for a particular ward) and so on. Could have found her real easy and not much you can do about those references.

I do not live in fear of being found. My vocation practically requires a web presence so I am openly at risk. I don't help myself that many of my activites overlap. This thread was not so much a scare tactic as it was a call to be alert as to what you are revealing and how much ease of access are you comfortable with. Obviously some have a higher level of comfort than others.”

“Lyra...

"Breaking radio silence" is a silly reference of mine own. It is explained in the first couple of sentences of my first post. Nothing earth shattering I can assure you.”

“I get what you are saying HPM. It's available but the market for it isn't there yet. But I bet if someone came up with a cost effective way to let high end sales businesses know when a big spender walked onto their sales floor they would find away to incorporate it into their business plan. face recognition software exists now. Say that you walk into a store, a camera picks you up, identifies you, runs through records of your purchases and shows it on a screen that a salesman monitors (or his iphone beeps to let him no a big spender walked in). Right away he can make a quick decision if you are worth wasting his time on.”

“The "risk" is extremely low of anything negative happening to you due to your online usage. BUT if you are an ass online or make it a habit of posting things that common sense says you shouldn't, then your negativity risk goes up quickly. I'm not necessarily talking about crime or violence either.

The biggest danger on the web is not who we might run into. It is our own big mouths.”

“It is not uncommon for ex-offenders to try and find a friendly face when they get out of stir. Sometimes it is for the purposes of actually finding a friendly face. Sometimes it is to set up some kind of con. We are considered "easy marks" by some on the "inside". There are state and federal laws that regulate my ability to have contact with ex-offenders or the family of current offenders. One of the issues we are constantly being reminded of is we need to be aware of how easy we are to find to some one who wants to look for us. My interest in the stalking thing kind of migrated from that world to this.

Plus stalking is a very real growing problem. The Nigerian letter scams are only the tip of the iceberg.”

“Hyway, the only place that I know for a fact that has such a system implemented is the Casino industry and they had it before it was wired. Matter of fact they are the model for customer identification.

The vice industry is the industry to watch for customer facing technology.”

“"The biggest danger on the web is not who we might run into. It is our own big mouths.�

HPM, right you are. People have lost jobs because of what they and their families have said on the web. People have lost jobs for the websites they visited from work computers.

The chances that any one American will be subject to a kidnapping in any one year is about one 1 of 1,500,000. Most of those people kidnapped in the U.S. are usually white females kidnapped by force without a weapon by their present or former spouse or significant other, and are not injured when they are freed.”

“Or someone could just snatch you up off the street as a random target without any research. Or meet you at your place of work and follow you for a few days.
last edited: 12/17/07 11:31:48 AM�
hyway

The biggest danger on the web is not who we might run into. It is our own big mouths.�

couldn't agree more...i treat the web the same way i do real life...don't give someone a reason to phuck with you and you don't have anything to worry about...there's no difference in someone looking me up on line or randomly plucking me from a phone book”

“Can some buddy help me find my gimmedat I lots in the woods?”

“Yup. More and more employers are doing web searches and pulling up what they can on you. Your opinions on sites, your MySpace page, etc. You can severely hurt your chances of becoming employed if the wrong info on you is out there. In some cases, people are slandering other people and then that info, in turn, is misconstruen by employers as truth.

It's gonna be nasty.”

“Actually I use different user names everywhere as well as different passwords, and fake names I don't identify my working place by name. I do see a further need to edit even more even though I still cannot be found by the average user.”

“thanks Rev. - at least the easy ways don't work with me which is the way I like it”

“Rosey, I google every single applicant I get but there are two sides to that issue.
There a quite a few folks out there who feel the need to discuss proprietary and confidential company information openly on the web. If you work around that kind of info you most definitely have signed non-disclosure agreements. Breaking that agreements is always grounds for termination, lawsuits and in some cases prosecution.”

“In some cases, people are slandering other people and then that info, in turn, is misconstruen by employers as truth.

I heard dat. I like to follow up the slander with the truth.”

“new tt policy - trail talk - TheBackpacker.com
You may submit those to my partner, RamblinRev.” bearmagnet 8:33:39 AM 11/14/07 ... “email your porn to ramblinrev NOW......” chappy 7:45:45 AM 11/14/07 ...
www.thebackpacker.com/trailtalk/thread/49792.php - 34k - Cached - Similar pages

Case in point. Not that I am terribly worried about this coming back to haunt me, but this could look very bad in the search process for a pastoral candidate if they knew the user name was me. My user name is very similar in many different venues.”