Tag: Personal Privacy

I am very pleased to be able to post a guest blog from a very good friend of mine who is a non-security expert, but still very ‘computer savvy’ compared to most.

This is in response to my post; “If You Want More Privacy, Stay Off The Internet“.

If someone as ‘privacy aware’ as this still has these issues, you can image how bad things are for the majority.

Finally, thank you so much for this [friend who will remain anonymous] 🙂

“As a parent of three (20, 19 and 17) who live and die on their smart phones and tablets, and play games on the TV using the internet via their X-box 360s and PS3’s I suppose, as a non technical person, I’ve probably given more thought to Personal Information Security than most.  Add into that mix the fact that I am married to a Military Man, that I, myself was a serving member of HM Forces and worked for the Government overseas, then I should be able to sit here and say, hand on heart, that I take all reasonable measures to protect my personal information and understand easily what failing to follow basic guidelines can lead to.  So imagine my displeasure when a few simple Google searches both reassured, and horrified me. 

 
First, I tried my name – this returned results of a Swedish glamour model and her twitter accounts, and there in 6th place my LinkedIn profile – that’s OK, I actually WANT that audience to find me.  I added my middle initial to the search and down near the bottom of my page is a www.192.com listing from an address lived in previously.  Should I worry about this? Perhaps, perhaps not, I mean after all it is information that is publicly available via the Electoral Roll and the Census, it lists my husband as a co-habitant at that address, but on this page, it is a generic listing that gives only the town location – to get further details and to see if I have any county court judgements against me, you have to sign up and register. Thanks but I’ll pass.
 
So that’s not so bad is it? 
 
OK – take my daughter, she is heavily into her computer technology, her gaming community and live bands and gigs.  She routinely uses twitter, Facebook, Google plus, YouTube and many other forms of social media, the list is endless.  Again a simple Google search with our town name tagged on the end of her name returns nothing of great surprise and she’s actually got a 192.com listing at our current location which shows us all as co-occupants in the house (me, my husband and her two sisters).  Again its generic info, but we are all there.  Also returned are her YouTube channel, her Facebook and twitter accounts etc.  
 
My eye is drawn half way down the search results, in the image table of the six photos that appear on the search result, three of them are of my daughter.  Hmm interesting,– so I follow the images link to see what else I can recognise as hers.  And there I am, with my husband, in London on a day out – how the heck did that get there?, the hyperlink says it’s a plus.google.com image.
 
I run a couple more searches based on old email prefix’s and avatar nick names that I used in the late 90s when I was actively involved in  MSN communities helping women world wide (and maybe no so security savvy as the internet was a brand new, shiny and unknown beast to me back then).  I thought that MSN had scrapped all the pages, they certainly told us they were doing so, but no, lo and behold, there are a few of my old rambling posts for all to see, and all the other alternatives sites that we used that we tried to use to substitute for MSN Communities, yup – I’ve found all my old user names and some hilarious posts from back in the day when I was trying to learn graphics in Photoshop and PaintShopPro.
 
This got me thinking, if little old me, with my very limited IT knowledge can find all this stuff out in 10 minutes from mucking about in Google, what can someone do if they find this limited information and actually see tenable links.  If they had a clever programme that linked me and my family, and then actually got a proper account at 192.com and worked out that as a family we have had three homes in the last 5 years – that’s very powerful information.  If that person then thought a little bit (and not much) deeper and interrogatedancestary.com looking for family ties, they would soon have my mothers maiden name…. well we all know how powerful that information is when put with addresses of the last 5 years.
 
This is not new news to the probable audience of this blog, but I bet my children haven’t thought about it in this way, despite me and my hubby imploring them to share nothing personal on the internet.  Indeed, I ‘thought’ I had deleted all those old accounts.  I was fairly certain there was harmless stuff out there on the web, but really who is interested in me? Is there anything more I could do?
 
Well I supposed I could rid myself of the technology around me, but would it make a difference? Of course it wouldn’t. I could become paranoid and withdraw from the social media arena, but I like it, and then if I do that the bad guys who would be unscrupulous and mean with my information have won – and I don’t like the little man being persecuted.  
 
My employer, the tax man, DVLC, my bank, none of these organisations are going to walk away from using IT in the day-to-day, and in my opinion, nor should I.  So I can be cautious, and not put things like the obvious out there for the bots to find, but I also have to put my trust in the system, and hope that my Government is arming itself and doing all the things the bad guys are doing, not to exploit my citizenship and be big brother, but to protect me.  I will continue to shield my personal info online using the means available to me, and trust that the clever buggers out there with the know how on the good side of the fence, will outsmart and learn new ways to stop those toe rags on the bad side of the fence in their tracks.“
Anyone have any their own thoughts on this?