But you can

In both cases you illustrated, I think the problem is actually a screwed up Puritan culture that expects perfection out of the next generation all the while conveniently ignoring the oats that the current generation sowed. In both cases, I think that the issue is rank hypocrisy.

That doesn’t make your point any less accurate, however – adults can get in trouble for the activities of their children, and I could easily have been denied my own job because of the length of my own data shadow had my current employer chosen to do so (and, given that Colorado is a right to work state, I could still be fired because of it). But I think that the solution to idiocy like this is standing up to the hypocrisy (I hope the teacher wins her federal lawsuit – she should) and publicly shaming the people who engage in it.

http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=2029

And- as minors- their online activities have a great potential to get you- or any other adult guardian- into deep trouble, too.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/20060626-9999-1m26letter.html

I appreciate the kind words, but I still think your priorities are messed up. The problem with you not focusing on these issues is that there are far, far too many people out there like you, and as a result, it makes it harder for people like Sunfell and I to actually raise awareness on these issues. So in a very real way, you’re making my job more difficult.

I guess we’ll have to just agree to disagree on this, but make no mistake–I think you would better serve yourself AND your kids by protecting them from the very real possibility that data shadowing could ruin your life, as opposed to paranoia about pervs masturbating to your kids’ photos or someone stealing your property for a company you’re probably never going to build.

Thanks.

Perhaps what we need here is the electronic equivalent of a personal shredder. I put all my credit card offers and receipts with my signature on them through a shredder as a reasonable precaution. But really, if someone is sufficiently motivated to mess with me, even a cross-shredder won’t keep them working out the puzzle and from opening accounts under my name or forging my signature. Again, it’s a question of degree, not of threat.

And I found when I became a parent that I worry a lot about things that don’t necessarily qualify as “intellectually organized” in the sense you’re using. You might not think that having an unpublished photo of my kids out there being used to make money for Google or being used by a sicko to masturbate to isn’t a real threat, but I consider that possibility far, far, far more frightening than I do someone screwing with my credit rating. My credit rating can be fixed. My kids potential for loss of innocence can not be recovered.

“Part of the problem is that the disaster economy sneaked up on us. In the 80s and 90s, new economies announced themselves with great pride and fanfare. The tech bubble in particular set a precedent for a new ownership class inspiring deafening levels of hype – endless media lifestyle profiles of dashing young CEOs beside their private jets, their remote-controlled yachts, their idyllic Seattle mountain homes. That kind of wealth is being generated by the disaster complex today, though we rarely hear about it. While the CEOs of the top 34 defence contractors saw their incomes go up an average of 108% between 2001 and 2005, chief executives at other large American companies averaged only 6% over the same period.

Peter Swire, who served as the US government

You’re right. I do find it weird, not to mention more than a bit paranoid and intellectually disordered.

Consider this–what if a sex offender uses personally available information gleaned about you from one of these mailing lists or search engines and uses that to move next door? Or what if an identity thief uses personal data of yours to open up new accounts and wreck your credit rating, or just steal money from your account? Your kids and your livelihood are just as messed up as they might be if your Google doomsday scenarios came to pass. More so, actually, since there’s more evidence to back up my scenarios than yours.

I certainly applaud your desire to protect your kids, but I think you’re pointing at the wrong targets. You’re much more vulnerable to identity theft and fraud from information reselling–and your children are much more in danger from the availability of your personal data–than from someone stealing your Google photos.

Weird as you may find this, I take copyright, trademark, and patent law FAR more seriously than I do my own personal information. And I take my duties to properly raise my kids and protect them as my highest concerns, bar none.

Security and convenience have a fundamental, unavoidable tradeoff. If you make something so secure that it cannot be breached by anyone, you’ve also made it so secure that it cannot be breached even by the people who need to use it. This is true of physical security and internet security. That’s not to say that we shouldn’t be concerned that we’ve trended too far toward convenience and away from security, but rather that we need to develop a “happy medium.”

Of course, if you talk to the companies, they’d probably say that, given the relative dearth of complaints about these things, they’ve already found that “happy medium.” Personally, I think it’s a lack of education of the populace instead.

I’ve always taken the WarGames maxim “I don’t believe any system is completely secure” and applied it to everything I do. Every online transaction is tracked and databased. Every government document is tracked and databased. Every speeding infraction, every accident, every medical visit, every food purchase, everything is tracked and databased. I’ve accepted that the level of privacy both of you are calling for is an illusion, and has been an illusion since before I was even born. The only difference is that the tools to pierce that illusion are now cheaper, more powerful, and easier for everyone to acquire and use.

IMO, more people potentially having access to some of your personal information doesn’t make you less safe. It’s only ever taken one sufficiently motivated individual to ruin another person’s life.

I certainly won’t complain if laws were passed to strip out my personal information based on your activities. I just don’t think a) it’ll happen or b) it’ll matter even if it does. The most valuable information in those databases is your name, address, phone number, etc. And companies will find ways around everything you do to stop them. You’d probably be better off figuring out ways to restore a sense of ethics into the various database/data mining companies than in fighting them directly.

I seem to recall you having a paranoid fit about Google’s privacy policy for photo-sharing, which is no more or less egregious than others of its type. This actually plays to my point–you should investigate any company you plan to do business with online before taking the plunge. If their policies scare you, do business elsewhere and warn others of the potential risks. If you are comfortable with the trade of security for convenience, lay on.

Honestly, I don’t agree with the idea that security and convenience even have to be a tradeoff. You CAN have both without losing profit or scaring your customers away.

There’s just a boundary here that keeps being crossed over in the name of profits. Data mining has always been oversold by corps like IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and the like who sell databases & data mining tools, because overall, there’s a lot of junk in databases. They’re like lists. Once a list is made, it immediately out-of-date. Trouble is, it’s rarely updated after that.

The whole approach that businesses use has been wrong, but they’re too stupid to realize that.

If corporations had ethics, they’d understand that personal information is personal information, and not some commodity to be sold to profit them.

Did you know you can get Colin Powell’s or Tom Delay’s or Jeb Bush’s social security number off the net if you know where to look? It’s put out by by state documents. Yours too I bet. Some states are more careless than others about what they post on the local & state govt sites.

The US’ privacy approach is driven by what’s best for the corporations, not individuals.

You don’t have to be paranoid about things like this, but it doesn’t hurt to use precaution.

I can say with 100% certainty that old phone numbers I’ve used 5-6 years ago are still being called by companies selling stuff.

The question I often ask myself is if companies understood what a waste of time & resources they spend on out-of-date information, they’d start to question whether all the hype about data mining & data marketing was worth it for them. They don’t and I still protect myself.

It isn’t paranoia- it’s simple personal safety. You don’t know who looks at those sites- or why. I love the convenience of the technology, but dislike the price paid in my safety and privacy. Plus, the hazards of data breaches and the lack of responsibility by those corporations in keeping the data safe (and informing the customers) makes living one’s life in the digital mode a lot more risky.

The need is to limit -or eliminate- personally identifiable information, and the onus should be upon the corporations to make sure that is done. If not, they should be heavily fined, because nothing makes them pay attention better than a grab at their pocketbook.