Privacy...careful with apps you download!

[Guest tomcal]

There is a app for IPhones I downloaded a while back called Sync.me It cross references your email, phone numbers, contacts , Facebook page, LinkedIn etc., and merges them and seemed like a good idea..and it was/is for me. But...if someone had only given you their phone number or a email address..say a dancer at Johnny's or Boardwalk or a sauna boy in Rio and no other info on them like their real name, etc, it will automatically show up in your contact list after it updates. I found this out by accident when I saw a name in my contact list I didn't recognize! Turns out I now had the facebook page for a well known escort, but it was his real name and his family facebook page! I had never been with him but met him at a function about 4 or 5 years ago in SoCal and he gave me his phone number and I put it in my contacts list but never used it.. Well Sync.me found it and cross referenced it and it was in in facebook profile under his real and vastly different name from his escort one! I also ended up with the real names and FB of 3 So. Florida strippers from Johnny's/Boardwalk. Since this works both ways be careful, it seems harder and harder to guard privacy in the digital age. I would never gave the information out that I got on these guys but I am sure that there could be others out there with grudge against a escort or you and could cause someone a lot of embarrassment.

Some Tips to safeguard your privacy if you are concerned: Make sure you use one email for you sexual friends that is different from your family friends business email. Don't put you real phone number in social apps including FB!

[MsAnn]

Excellent information, and a little surprising. But I have never given my real phone number out to a dancer/escort etc. I use a separate loadable phone I got at the grocery store for that. No real names and untraceable as to my identity, at least that's the plan, but in this day and age, perhaps anything is possible.

I saw an app the other day that can GPS any photo you download onto the Internet, even if it is taken of something as generic as the dash board of your car. It recognizes the kind of camera/phone/aper setting/ and location, and will Google earth the location down to a few feet.

My cousin asked me to join 'linkedin' and post a profile. I did, but was careful to keep information about myself generic. Linkedin will link individual profiles to like minded professionals. A neighbor who lives down the street and with whom I have only communicated with once by email, and only met once, popped up in my computer as 'someone I might know'. It gave her full real profile and all personal information about her and her business, and all her contacts. Certainly information that I wouldn't want my neighbors to know about me. I would imagine that linkedin is data mining. But not sure.

I guess the lesson is that, nothing is really private anymore. Can you say "1984"

[boiworship]

Burner phone, separate email accounts, no FB page.

[AdamSmith]

Re: LinkedIn, I have a business-oriented profile there and about 1500 "connections," i.e., other LinkedIn members that either I have invited to "connect" with, or who invited me. That just means that whenever I or they post any content or comments on LinkedIn, your connections get a notice of it.

The contact information that I entered on my LinkedIn profile was my name, company name (business that I own), my business email address, and my company web site URL.

NOT my phone number. If anyone needs my business phone, they can follow the link to my business web site and find it there. But that seems sufficient distance to prevent my phone # from being hoovered up by bots crawling LinkedIn for their own purposes.

(My business number is also my personal cell phone -- the only phone # I have. Which I also use to contact escorts, but somehow over a dozen years of hiring ~150 people I have never run into any trouble from this. Lucky me I suppose. Or, in any event -- what, me worry? )

I first put up a profile on LInkedIn about a decade ago. My experience has been that LinkedIn is much more passive in gathering information about you than Facebook, or any of the aggressive third-party add-ons that have metastasized around Facebook.

[JKane]

I saw an app the other day that can GPS any photo you download onto the Internet, even if it is taken of something as generic as the dash board of your car. It recognizes the kind of camera/phone/aper setting/ and location, and will Google earth the location down to a few feet.

Exif data is attached to photos automatically, from a regular camera it can include enough info to link it to other photos you've put online and maybe figure out your identitiy, but from a cell phone camera it includes stuff like GPS info which could provide your location as well as identifying info.

Run the photos you send out to hookups though an exif viewer/remover.

[RA1]

AS-

When you say "hoovered up", do you mean as in a vacuum cleaner or J. Edgar? Either might apply.

Best regards,

RA1

[AdamSmith]

When you say "hoovered up", do you mean as in a vacuum cleaner or J. Edgar? Either might apply.

[RA1]

Nicht verstehe.

Best regards,

RA1

[AdamSmith]

[lookin]

LinkedIn can be a pain in the ass. I keep getting "personalized invitations" from people I worked with long ago or from acquaintances who have me on some kind of email list.

Apparently, when a new user signs up, they ask him not only for his email address but for his email password as well! Then LinkedIn goes into his email address book and sends out "personalized invitations" to "selected" folks inviting them to join their "old pal" on LinkedIn.

I find it irritating as hell to get one of these "invitations". I used to feel guilty ignoring them thinking perhaps the person was inviting me personally and might feel rejected if I didn't "accept" the invitation. When I found out how LinkedIn did it, I started wondering about the judgement of the person who would open up his or her entire email address list to a company like that.

LinkedIn doesn't stop if I ignore the first "authorized" invitation. A few days later, they send out a second invitation that makes it sound like the person is really waiting to hear from me, and then a third invitation making it sound like I'm really letting my "pal" down if I don't sign up. Apparently, they got sued for it too.

But they're still doing it.

[AdamSmith]

Now I feel neglected. My LinkedIn membership has never resulted in anything like that.

But I've never given LinkedIn my email password. Nor would I ever. You can join without doing that. Evidently I am fortunate that none of my past or present associates opened up their email lists with me on them to that kind of abuse either.

I only get LinkedIn invitations to connect from specific individuals who have some specific reason to connect with me. Very few in number, like one or two a week on average, now that I myself am fairly active posting my articles on there. Very very few before that.

[Guest CharliePS]

LinkedIn can be a pain in the ass. I keep getting "personalized invitations" from people I worked with long ago or from acquaintances who have me on some kind of email list.

Apparently, when a new user signs up, they ask him not only for his email address but for his email password as well! Then LinkedIn goes into his email address book and sends out "personalized invitations" to "selected" folks inviting them to join their "old pal" on LinkedIn.

I find it irritating as hell to get one of these "invitations". I used to feel guilty ignoring them thinking perhaps the person was inviting me personally and might feel rejected if I didn't "accept" the invitation. When I found out how LinkedIn did it, I started wondering about the judgement of the person who would open up his or her entire email address list to a company like that.

LinkedIn doesn't stop if I ignore the first "authorized" invitation. A few days later, they send out a second invitation that makes it sound like the person is really waiting to hear from me, and then a third invitation making it sound like I'm really letting my "pal" down if I don't sign up. Apparently, they got sued for it too.

But they're still doing it.

I have had exactly the same experience with Linkedin. I generally ignore these "invitations," but sometimes I contact the person directly about it. In every case, they have told me they were completely unaware that Linkedin had contacted me with a claim that they had told Linked in that they would like me to join. One of them I barely know, the son of friends I had in high school, who is a fishing boat captain in the Florida keys; I doubt that we would have much professional experience worth sharing.

[MsAnn]

LinkedIn can be a pain in the ass. I keep getting "personalized invitations" from people I worked with long ago or from acquaintances who have me on some kind of email list.

Apparently, when a new user signs up, they ask him not only for his email address but for his email password as well! Then LinkedIn goes into his email address book and sends out "personalized invitations" to "selected" folks inviting them to join their "old pal" on LinkedIn.

I find it irritating as hell to get one of these "invitations". I used to feel guilty ignoring them thinking perhaps the person was inviting me personally and might feel rejected if I didn't "accept" the invitation. When I found out how LinkedIn did it, I started wondering about the judgement of the person who would open up his or her entire email address list to a company like that.

LinkedIn doesn't stop if I ignore the first "authorized" invitation. A few days later, they send out a second invitation that makes it sound like the person is really waiting to hear from me, and then a third invitation making it sound like I'm really letting my "pal" down if I don't sign up. Apparently, they got sued for it too.

But they're still doing it.

MsAnn Likes this. I tried ignoring them also, but they are relentless. Might delete them soon.,