Social media and our info out there on public display

[MarkB]

I only ever signed up to Facebook once, to keep up with a couple of close friends who were on vacation in Florida, and sending updates via Facebook. Afterwards, I closed my account and went through the additional hoops that would tell them to actually delete my data within 30 days.

I've always felt that social media in general, and Facebook in particular, is one of those things that has way too much potential to go wrong on either an individual or global level - that it's something we'll look back on in ten years' time and say "can you believe how careless we all were with our personal information back then?"

 

[Hand of Evil]

My FaceBook is just to keep up with my interest, games or TV shows.

What concerns me is future tech, bar code tattoos or chips that hold information. Tin foil hat time, they start with kids and fear, tag them to find them or easy way to keep your records...next thing you know, someone is misusing the data.

 

[Janx]

My FaceBook is just to keep up with my interest, games or TV shows.

What concerns me is future tech, bar code tattoos or chips that hold information. Tin foil hat time, they start with kids and fear, tag them to find them or easy way to keep your records...next thing you know, someone is misusing the data.

Well, allegedly in Texas, they're handing out student badges with RFID in them and tracking them within the school.

And apparently via Freedom of Information Act, you can request a student list (apparently including the RFID).

Then you can buy a scanner and cruise around your neighborhood to identify kids.

Some parents are super freaked about this. I can only say that it is feasible and probably reasonable to track kids in the school via an RFID in their student badge. Odds are good the RFID only carries a GUID (globally unique ID) and thus doesn't itself convey information.

And somebody COULD scan your kid when they get near to get that GUID.

But there ain't much they can do with that.

Remember, RFID is very short range. Near enough to scan you at the door as you exit, not near enough to zap your house to count how many delicious children you have to eat.

 

[tomBitonti]

My FaceBook is just to keep up with my interest, games or TV shows.
What concerns me is future tech, bar code tattoos or chips that hold information. Tin foil hat time, they start with kids and fear, tag them to find them or easy way to keep your records...next thing you know, someone is misusing the data.

Welcome to the future -- the future is now.

Read an article a couple of years back that described factory workers in Mexico being tagged.

Here is a link of an example. This is from the vendor, so I'd be mindful of spin / bias:

http://www.xterprise.com/resources/Case-Studies/JandJ-Cordis-de-Mexico.aspx

Here is another take:

http://www.geekwire.com/2012/qa-amal-graafstra/

Thx!

TomB

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Well, allegedly in Texas, they're handing out student badges with RFID in them and tracking them within the school.

And apparently via Freedom of Information Act, you can request a student list (apparently including the RFID).

Then you can buy a scanner and cruise around your neighborhood to identify kids.

YAY!

Remember, RFID is very short range. Near enough to scan you at the door as you exit, not near enough to zap your house to count how many delicious children you have to eat.

Awwww...

 

[Janx]

YAY!



Awwww...

Yup. There's a lot of PIECES of scary things out there, but most of it is not connected or has limitations that the foil hats ignore.

There's apparently been paranoia about cameras recording location data in the image files, as if your pictures were easily available to predators AND you remained in one spot so you'd be there 3 weeks later when the creep came to the park looking for you.

As it turns out, apparently Facebook and other photo places strip that information from the file. It's not in there on the places bad guys MIGHT get your pictures from.

It turns out, pedos will keep getting their fix from the school across the street or by running their own children's charity.

I think as a society, we're scared about the wrong things. we go nuts over these convoluted possibilities and neglect the very simple path of least resistance that the bad guys are going to actually take.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I think as a society, we're scared about the wrong things. we go nuts over these convoluted possibilities and neglect the very simple path of least resistance that the bad guys are going to actually take.

Actually, humans as a whole have been shown to consistently screw up the actual calculus of risk. Look up "psychology of risk perception" and prepare to be disappointed in Homo sapiens.

 

[tomBitonti]

Actually, humans as a whole have been shown to consistently screw up the actual calculus of risk. Look up "psychology of risk perception" and prepare to be disappointed in Homo sapiens.

Yeah, people tend to be quite terrible at handling statistics and probability.

On the other hand, they are able to make judgements on limited and dirty information and to do so quickly.

Seems that our quick decision making capability is a poor fit for certain categories of problems. In hindsight, I'm not sure that should be a surprise.

Thx!

TomB

 

[Starfox]

Morrus asked us not to discuss politics when this thread turned a particular way. Well, for me, ALL of this is politics - and it is the political hot potato of the future. We had a Pirate Party here for about a decade and it actually has delegates in the EU, tough the scare that got them there has abated and they'll probably lose their seats in the next election. I hear they've had more success in Germany.

But just as this is the hot political of the future, it is also something people will grow up into, like people have grown up into lots of other state controls. Need to carry a passport to travel? Does the state record births? In a historical context, all of these changes are pretty recent (a few hundred years) (and Sweden was at the forefront of most of those changes). People will get used to these things, but also make demands on how they are used. It's not something we can get around, it is the future.

 

[Umbran]

And apparently via Freedom of Information Act, you can request a student list (apparently including the RFID).

I'm going to guess this one is not true. The 1976 Sunshine Act specifically exempts information where disclosure would constitute a breach of privacy from the FoIA. As in, your fellow citizen's right to privacy outrules your freedom to know things.

Most times you have Personally Identifying Information, government organizations are specifically *not* allowed to just give it out. Freedom of Information is there to let you know what the government is doing, but not anything about your fellow citizens.

Oh, and an added thought just to show that this isn't something to really fear. Imagine that a FoIA request *could* get you the ID numbers for kids. If it could do that, it could get you *any other records*. Like, say, the photo on the ID, which is probably digitally stored. The RFID tag is then not an issue, as bad guys would be able to visually identify the student, and would be unlikely to ever need the RFID at all.