VftT and Privacy

[--M.]

I saw a story in the NY Times last year about how LinkedIn sends invitations on your behalf to contacts it has harvested from your e-mail address-book, whether you knew that or not. They were sued about it; I don't know the outcome of the story.

I saw a story tonight on '60 Minutes' about data mining and profiling. It confirmed assumptions I'd made about how public my 'clicks' are.

I'm trying not to be too naive about what we do here, but I have a couple of questions:

Does VftT sell or give our IP addresses or any other data to anyone else (like data-mining firms)?

Other than what can be viewed by anyone, are our communications tied to our identities and harvested in ways we should be aware of?

What should VftT subscribers do to be educated participants in this on-line world?

I don't believe in paranoia or pulling fire-alarms, but I've tried to maintain some level of privacy, and it's a real challenge!

I'd welcome reassuring comments from moderators and cautions from users.

 

[Peakbagr]

VFTT definitely does not provide ANY information about users to anyone.
From my own experience on the web, searching for your user name will bring up questions you pose or information you inquire about on any site.
Google a specific inquiry and you're liable to find a link to the site where you asked or provided information as one of the search outcomes.
If you've linked a screen name and your real name on any site, you may appear in a search.

 

[DougPaul]

What should VftT subscribers do to be educated participants in this on-line world?

Rules of thumb:
* Do not post any info on a website that you would be unwilling to see published in a newspaper. This includes limited access portions of the websites--an attacker may be able to break in or a person who is allowed access may abuse the data or post it in an unprotected place.
* Do not use the same password on different websites.

BTW, email is about as private as a postcard.

Doug

 

[peakbagger]

I except that external data mining occurs of the site and I use the same screen name for a couple of forums and on at least some of them my IP address is associated with my screen name thus a marketer has my interests. I use google chrome and google for a search engine so google knows a lot about me. I use credit cards and I expect the credit card companies have very detailed profiles of my purchases. There have been articles over the years on how to drop off " the grid" but the reality is that the trade off for all this convenience that comes from computers is a major loss in privacy.

 

[Framerman]

Generally speaking, your browsing can be tracked and viewed pretty easily. Cookies, your ISP, or any malicious websites can track where you go, what you do, and what you see. Take this site for example. If there is any type of unknown security breach, you could easily get malware, a virus, redirected, your history viewed...it's better to be conscious of safe browsing habits, but I don't think you can protect yourself 100%.