I don’t mind posting my thoughts online. Why not? But I do not want to post sensitive personal information online. Unfortunately doing the former without doing the latter is getting harder. More and more companies are taking — read “stealing” — freely available personal data and posting it on their own sites in order to produce new services, and thereby make money. That means that data passes out of your control.
A few days ago I had a run-in with someone rather unpleasant online who started threatening me. This led me to consider just how much information a malicious person might be able to locate about me. Could someone find my home address, telephone number and so on? I’ve always been cautious; but the answer is “too much”.
I’ll be moving the roger-pearse.com domain to another registrar. This is because the existing one, Network Solutions, demand money not to broadcast a lot of personal information about me online. I’ve resorted to turning the WHOIS entry into garbage, but this is not ideal.
During the changeover it is possible that the site may become inaccessible for a while. Don’t be alarmed if this happens; it will get fixed!
It is scary. When I was sending out my wedding invitations I used the web to look up relatives and I found everything: phone numbers, addresses, date of birth…
At the time I thought it was wonderfully convenient…but in hindsight, wow how terribly scary!
I would have done the same once. The web was a friendlier, safer place ten years ago than it is now.
The problem is the quantity of criminals — I think we can reasonably call them that — online. Do you notice that fewer and fewer people are posting under their own names? It’s just not safe to do so; and those of us who continue to do so and then post in fora meet with insults for so doing. It is a routine tactic to look up anything you ever said anywhere and then quote-mine it to attack you personally, rather than discuss the issue.
Even those who might be willing have to consider the possibility that some scumbag manager might cause them to lose their jobs. Fortunately that cannot happen to me, since I work for myself; but few have that degree of power over their own lives.
We live in a society that grows ever less free, ever more controlling, and ever more determined to say “you can’t do that; you can’t say that!” etc. O tempora! O mores!