Guest EXPAT Posted February 7, 2012 Posted February 7, 2012 This is pretty funny and not far from the truth. . . Quote
Members Lucky Posted February 8, 2012 Members Posted February 8, 2012 And the government is watching every post! From Sunday's NY Times: Material mined online has been used against people battling for child custody or defending themselves in criminal cases. LexisNexis has a product called Accurint for Law Enforcement, which gives government agents information about what people do on social networks. The Internal Revenue Service searches Facebook and MySpace for evidence of tax evaders’ income and whereabouts, and United States Citizenship and Immigration Services has been known to scrutinize photos and posts to confirm family relationships or weed out sham marriages. Employers sometimes decide whether to hire people based on their online profiles, with one study indicating that 70 percent of recruiters and human resource professionals in the United States have rejected candidates based on data found online. A company called Spokeo gathers online data for employers, the public and anyone else who wants it. The company even posts ads urging “HR Recruiters — Click Here Now!” and asking women to submit their boyfriends’ e-mail addresses for an analysis of their online photos and activities to learn “Is He Cheating on You?” Stereotyping is alive and well in data aggregation. Your application for credit could be declined not on the basis of your own finances or credit history, but on the basis of aggregate data — what other people whose likes and dislikes are similar to yours have done. If guitar players or divorcing couples are more likely to renege on their credit-card bills, then the fact that you’ve looked at guitar ads or sent an e-mail to a divorce lawyer might cause a data aggregator to classify you as less credit-worthy. When an Atlanta man returned from his honeymoon, he found that his credit limit had been lowered to $3,800 from $10,800. The switch was not based on anything he had done but on aggregate data. A letter from the company told him, “Other customers who have used their card at establishments where you recently shopped have a poor repayment history with American Express.” Quote
Members TampaYankee Posted February 8, 2012 Members Posted February 8, 2012 Best to avoid social media, email, online banking -- the internet in general. Avoid credit cards, use cash and pay phones and live in a Faraday cage. Take cabs and public transportation. Or.... just relocate to a small island in the Caribbean or South China Sea and live off the land, so to speak. Quote
Members Lucky Posted February 8, 2012 Members Posted February 8, 2012 Best to avoid social media, email, online banking -- the internet in general. Avoid credit cards, use cash and pay phones and live in a Faraday cage. Take cabs and public transportation. Or.... just relocate to a small island in the Caribbean or South China Sea and live off the land, so to speak. Hmmm...spoken like a guy in cahoots with the feds! Those IP addresses sell for a nickel a million! Quote
Members JKane Posted February 8, 2012 Members Posted February 8, 2012 Hahahaha, like many others, I'm still waiting for the party to *start* on Google+. But there's some interesting content, esp. for the geeky--and a lot less of the BS one apparently puts up with on Facebook. Quote
Guest EXPAT Posted February 8, 2012 Posted February 8, 2012 Hahahaha, like many others, I'm still waiting for the party to *start* on Google+. But there's some interesting content, esp. for the geeky--and a lot less of the BS one apparently puts up with on Facebook. So far Google + has been a colossal waste of time. It's as dead as MySpace seems to be anymore. . . Quote
