4 ms·

You are entirely missing the point when you start focusing on "cyber rapists" or girls, or anything like that. The point is that ANYONE can potentially pull and

You are entirely missing the point when you start focusing on "cyber rapists" or girls, or anything like that. The point is that ANYONE can potentially pull and track this information and combine it with other data sources without your permission or knowledge. Months, years, or even decades from now, with increasingly better analysis techniques. That could be a rapist, that could be an abusive government, that could be your ex boyfriend/girlfriend, that could be your employers checking if you were at the bar last night, it could even be your health insurance making sure you went to the gym yesterday, or else they raise your premium. It gets even scarier when you have companies like say credit agencies tracking where you went and who you were closest to, and determining your "risk score" for various things like loans and jobs, etc. The point is there is a massive potential for abuse here that most people have absolutely no idea about. Its simply startling to me that so many here work day in, day out on computers, yet totally fail to realize the power of data analytics when you feed in massive amounts of data. The most disturbing point of all in this shit, is when you are refused a job, or a loan, or medical insurance, you wont ever know why, you will simply know you made the numbers go down for some reason, and people will become deathly afraid of that, so will take fewer risks in their life, and generally lead a very closely guarded, boring existence.

bradleyland 15y ago
> The point is that ANYONE can potentially pull and track this information and combine it with other data sources without your permission or knowledge. That point is not lost on me, but that's not the issue I was rebutting. That's not why Girls Around Me was pulled. That's not the source of fear that all the negative press was playing on. If anything, it's yet another sideshow that distracts from the greater issue. The Girls Around Me blow-up wasn't subtle. It was very straight forward, and blown out of proportion, IMO. It won't do anything to draw attention to the far more subtle issues of implicitly wide-open online privacy standards.
Spearchucker 15y ago
What is the probability of that happening to any individual? And what's the impact? At a guess I'd say the impact can be high. The probability is probably quite low. If exposure = probability x impact, then exposure is (guessing) low to medium.
- bradleyland 15y ago
  You'd be amazed what what's really present in the statistics. Humans commonly worry about the wrong things. Categorically, we are very poor judges of risk on a broad scale. In a single event, we're pretty good, but it cannot be emphasized enough that we suck hard at intuitive understanding of broad threats. Here's an article that points out quite a few things you wouldn't expect. It's about 2 years old, which isn't all that old for stats. These things take time to compile. http://crimeinamerica.net/2010/12/13/what-are-my-chances-of-being-a-victim-of-violent-crime/ http://crimeinamerica.net/2010/12/13/what-are-my-chances-of-... A relevant point: "Females knew their offenders in almost 70% of violent crimes committed against them (they are relatives, friends or acquaintances). If females make the best possible choices as to who they associate with (if they have a choice) their rates of violent crime drop considerably." So right off the bat, we can see that a significant majority of violent crime is committed by the person you know, not some random stalker on the internet. My point isn't that we should ignore internet privacy concerns. My point is that the fear mongering in the press is reprehensible. The obligation of the press is to inform the public. Today, it seems that the obligation of the press is to sell ad impressions, and scary plot lines... sorry, scary editorials about internet rapists draws readers.

bradleyland 15y ago

> The point is that ANYONE can potentially pull and track this information and combine it with other data sources without your permission or knowledge. That point is not lost on me, but that's not the issue I was rebutting. That's not why Girls Around Me was pulled. That's not the source of fear that all the negative press was playing on. If anything, it's yet another sideshow that distracts from the greater issue. The Girls Around Me blow-up wasn't subtle. It was very straight forward, and blown out of proportion, IMO. It won't do anything to draw attention to the far more subtle issues of implicitly wide-open online privacy standards.

Spearchucker 15y ago

What is the probability of that happening to any individual? And what's the impact? At a guess I'd say the impact can be high. The probability is probably quite low. If exposure = probability x impact, then exposure is (guessing) low to medium.

bradleyland 15y ago
You'd be amazed what what's really present in the statistics. Humans commonly worry about the wrong things. Categorically, we are very poor judges of risk on a broad scale. In a single event, we're pretty good, but it cannot be emphasized enough that we suck hard at intuitive understanding of broad threats. Here's an article that points out quite a few things you wouldn't expect. It's about 2 years old, which isn't all that old for stats. These things take time to compile. http://crimeinamerica.net/2010/12/13/what-are-my-chances-of-being-a-victim-of-violent-crime/ http://crimeinamerica.net/2010/12/13/what-are-my-chances-of-... A relevant point: "Females knew their offenders in almost 70% of violent crimes committed against them (they are relatives, friends or acquaintances). If females make the best possible choices as to who they associate with (if they have a choice) their rates of violent crime drop considerably." So right off the bat, we can see that a significant majority of violent crime is committed by the person you know, not some random stalker on the internet. My point isn't that we should ignore internet privacy concerns. My point is that the fear mongering in the press is reprehensible. The obligation of the press is to inform the public. Today, it seems that the obligation of the press is to sell ad impressions, and scary plot lines... sorry, scary editorials about internet rapists draws readers.