14 ms·

Personally, I wasn't too concerned with Google knowing my actual identity, but more with the prospect of tons of information leaking to anyone who I ever meet.

by x1798DE 12y ago

Personally, I wasn't too concerned with Google knowing my actual identity, but more with the prospect of tons of information leaking to anyone who I ever meet. For example, it's no longer possible to anonymously review or rate android apps. They retroactively changed all older app reviews to be by "An anonymous user", but now all reviews and ratings are done under your Google+ account, so I just stopped reviewing and rating apps. If I were to rate and review apps as I would prefer to do, then anyone googling my name when they meet me would find my Google+ account, then it would be trivial for them to click around and find out essentially a list of all the apps I use on a regular basis, and how I use them. I don't know that there's anything too personal at the moment, but given that that information is essentially out there forever, I don't want to accidentally rate some app that might reveal my political, religious or cultural affliations (which could bias a future employer or landlord), or something else that might be very telling about my personal life. For me, Google having a huge trove of information on me only matters to the extent that they'd ever show it to anyone else. I don't care what they do with the data internally, I've disclosed it to them, but it's clear after the Snowden documents that Google doesn't have the ability to fight government intrusion into their databases (making their huge troves a very tempting target), and after the fiasco with Google Buzz (and this nonsense with Google+ and the "real names" policy), it's become obvious that they don't seem to have the sort of mindset that is appropriate for a good steward of my private data. It's sad, because they provide many great products, but they are simply not trustworthy - as that becomes more obvious to more people, I imagine it will start to affect their bottom line.

debt 12y ago
I know this is probably an unpopular idea but it seems like we set up so much infrastructure(intelligence agencies, the entire security industry, etc.) to create and secure private information that I feel like it creates an unnecessary economic burden and has an unnecessary psychological effect on people. We as a society need to first trust a large entity(which obviously right now is not gonna happen) with as much personally identifying information as possible in the hopes of creating an authority and allowing us to navigate the "system" much more easily(like I said renewing a Driver's License, getting a welfare check more quickly, processing a zoning request more easily, getting a medical history, etc.). After that happens, we should hopefully then feel okay about sharing that personal information publicly. Not a selective news feed like FB but the equivalent of a publicly available intelligence dossier on yourself that anyone(including yourself) has free access to. I know it seems crazy, but I really believe that's where it's headed anyway. No more background checks or credit score checks or walled gardens etc. My current location, my current heart rate, my arrest record, all my google searches(eesh) my last mammogram or testicular cancer exam, etc. is on display for all(including myself) to check and find out instantly and for free. The world would collapse. Economies might actually collapse though. Obviously, society is not ready for that sort of thing just yet, but that should have been the direction Google should have gone with Google+(or Google Identity or whatever they want to call it) eventually. You can't index the world's information if most of it is "private".
- x1798DE 12y ago
  I'm not sure why you think this dystopian vision you have wouldn't be horrible. It would have massive chilling effects on nearly everyone's behavior, since it would be incredibly efficient to seek out and socially punish anyone with transgressive viewpoints. Protecting your privacy is worth it, and despite what you think, there are strategies that are likely to help protect quite a bit of it, if the impetus becomes strong enough.
- JadeNB 12y ago
  > After that happens, we should hopefully then feel okay about sharing that personal information publicly. Setting aside how comfortable I feel with the rest of your suggestion (I don't), this seems to miss a fundamental point: part of the reason that some information needs to be private is that it is how you authenticate yourself. In a world where you can easily get your welfare check, and where everyone else knows all relevant information about you, how do you stop someone else from getting your welfare check? (For the near future, anyway, presumably a physical presence will trump any information-based authentication; but having to be physically present for these transactions seems like it would erase the very convenience that is your goal.)
  - debt 12y ago
    In the movie There Will Be Blood a stranger shows up to Daniel Plainview's doorstep pretending to be his half-brother. The stranger relates some story about their childhood together and that's enough to convince Plainview of the stranger's identity(which isn't his actual identity) and relation(half-brother) to Plainview. It's false of course, and Daniel isn't happy when he finds out. But it's interesting comment on the times they lived in. There was no LinkedIn or FB or even a Driver's License for that matter to verify someone was who they said they were. Regardless, I really don't know how you actually identify someone. Likely, as you say, physically being present(retina scan, fingerprinting, both?). You raise an interesting philosophical question; that is, what is identity?
    - x1798DE 12y ago
      >Regardless, I really don't know how you actually identify someone. Likely, as you say, physically being present(retina scan, fingerprinting, both?). You raise an interesting philosophical question; that is, what is identity? It's not really a philosophical question being raised. The question of identity is always, "Is the person trying to authenticate the same person as someone with whom I have some relationship?" Online, you set up a username and password, and the presumption is that any person with that username and password is the same person who set up the account. If you want to prove your "real" identity, you're basically doing the same thing, but you're instead trying to prove that you're the same person as the one who was awarded your driver's license, or the same person whose birth is certified by your birth certificate.
sjf 12y ago
Even worse, any businesses or places you review on Google Maps are publicly visible under your G+ account. So an internet stalker can know exactly where you have been, what kind of establishments you visit (e.g gay bars, daycare) and approximately when.
- timothya 12y ago
  You can hide the reviews so that they don't show up on your Google+ profile. If they are hidden, you can only see someone's review by looking at a place that they've reviewed directly.
  - nounaut 12y ago
    And you could probably scrape that information from every listed restaurant in the country in a matter of seconds.
    - cloudwalking 12y ago
      Google does not let you scrape.
      - laumars 12y ago
        That doesn't mean that you cannot still write a bot to scrape the content. If it's displayable in a web browser, then it's also parsable from Perl (or whatever language you choose). Adding delays between page requests and/or distributing the requests would work around a lot of bot detection systems but in worst case scenario, there are projects out there that can solve Captcha's. Essentially this can be viewed like music of movie piracy; if it can be played then it can be copied.
        cloudwalking 12y ago
        Sure, but throttling is going to make it really slow to gather all the data you want.

by x1798DE 12y ago

debt 12y ago

I know this is probably an unpopular idea but it seems like we set up so much infrastructure(intelligence agencies, the entire security industry, etc.) to create and secure private information that I feel like it creates an unnecessary economic burden and has an unnecessary psychological effect on people. We as a society need to first trust a large entity(which obviously right now is not gonna happen) with as much personally identifying information as possible in the hopes of creating an authority and allowing us to navigate the "system" much more easily(like I said renewing a Driver's License, getting a welfare check more quickly, processing a zoning request more easily, getting a medical history, etc.). After that happens, we should hopefully then feel okay about sharing that personal information publicly. Not a selective news feed like FB but the equivalent of a publicly available intelligence dossier on yourself that anyone(including yourself) has free access to. I know it seems crazy, but I really believe that's where it's headed anyway. No more background checks or credit score checks or walled gardens etc. My current location, my current heart rate, my arrest record, all my google searches(eesh) my last mammogram or testicular cancer exam, etc. is on display for all(including myself) to check and find out instantly and for free. The world would collapse. Economies might actually collapse though. Obviously, society is not ready for that sort of thing just yet, but that should have been the direction Google should have gone with Google+(or Google Identity or whatever they want to call it) eventually. You can't index the world's information if most of it is "private".

x1798DE 12y ago
I'm not sure why you think this dystopian vision you have wouldn't be horrible. It would have massive chilling effects on nearly everyone's behavior, since it would be incredibly efficient to seek out and socially punish anyone with transgressive viewpoints. Protecting your privacy is worth it, and despite what you think, there are strategies that are likely to help protect quite a bit of it, if the impetus becomes strong enough.
JadeNB 12y ago
> After that happens, we should hopefully then feel okay about sharing that personal information publicly. Setting aside how comfortable I feel with the rest of your suggestion (I don't), this seems to miss a fundamental point: part of the reason that some information needs to be private is that it is how you authenticate yourself. In a world where you can easily get your welfare check, and where everyone else knows all relevant information about you, how do you stop someone else from getting your welfare check? (For the near future, anyway, presumably a physical presence will trump any information-based authentication; but having to be physically present for these transactions seems like it would erase the very convenience that is your goal.)
- debt 12y ago
  In the movie There Will Be Blood a stranger shows up to Daniel Plainview's doorstep pretending to be his half-brother. The stranger relates some story about their childhood together and that's enough to convince Plainview of the stranger's identity(which isn't his actual identity) and relation(half-brother) to Plainview. It's false of course, and Daniel isn't happy when he finds out. But it's interesting comment on the times they lived in. There was no LinkedIn or FB or even a Driver's License for that matter to verify someone was who they said they were. Regardless, I really don't know how you actually identify someone. Likely, as you say, physically being present(retina scan, fingerprinting, both?). You raise an interesting philosophical question; that is, what is identity?
  - x1798DE 12y ago
    >Regardless, I really don't know how you actually identify someone. Likely, as you say, physically being present(retina scan, fingerprinting, both?). You raise an interesting philosophical question; that is, what is identity? It's not really a philosophical question being raised. The question of identity is always, "Is the person trying to authenticate the same person as someone with whom I have some relationship?" Online, you set up a username and password, and the presumption is that any person with that username and password is the same person who set up the account. If you want to prove your "real" identity, you're basically doing the same thing, but you're instead trying to prove that you're the same person as the one who was awarded your driver's license, or the same person whose birth is certified by your birth certificate.

sjf 12y ago

Even worse, any businesses or places you review on Google Maps are publicly visible under your G+ account. So an internet stalker can know exactly where you have been, what kind of establishments you visit (e.g gay bars, daycare) and approximately when.

timothya 12y ago
You can hide the reviews so that they don't show up on your Google+ profile. If they are hidden, you can only see someone's review by looking at a place that they've reviewed directly.
- nounaut 12y ago
  And you could probably scrape that information from every listed restaurant in the country in a matter of seconds.
  - cloudwalking 12y ago
    Google does not let you scrape.
    - laumars 12y ago
      That doesn't mean that you cannot still write a bot to scrape the content. If it's displayable in a web browser, then it's also parsable from Perl (or whatever language you choose). Adding delays between page requests and/or distributing the requests would work around a lot of bot detection systems but in worst case scenario, there are projects out there that can solve Captcha's. Essentially this can be viewed like music of movie piracy; if it can be played then it can be copied.
      - cloudwalking 12y ago
        Sure, but throttling is going to make it really slow to gather all the data you want.