Security

[cactuswatcher]

I was in the bank a week ago, when one of the tellers made a simple mistake, and in the process accidentally revealed one of the bank's security procedures to me. I'm positive she didn't realize what she'd done. It wasn't enough to do any damage by itself. But for someone who was intent on doing ill, it would be a very valuable clue in how to do great harm to the bank and its individual customers. Clearly the person who'd trained her didn't know how important the secret was or she would have been direly warned not to do what she did.

And that's the problem. We live in a world where there is so much information floating around about each of us that could do us serious harm, that without knowing it part of our biggest defense against clever crooks is the shear volume of material that someone would have to wade through to get to us personally.

Google recently revealed that it is going to scan everything that comes through it's portal and make up virtual dossiers on everyone they can. This includes both incoming and outgoing emails. They intend to use it for advertising purposes. But it ought to be clear, first that this is not the first such scanning for the purpose of collecting info on individuals, and that the potential for misuse exists.

Specifically, I would like to warn people about tying anything on the Internet that is not through a secure connection to your real-world name. If like so many you have a Facebook account under your real name be very careful about what you say on Facebook even under their version of "friends only." Do not kid yourself, Facebook has the power to read anything you write, and if they can, it is possible for someone with ill intent to break in and do the same. Facebook does not have anything like the security the smallest bank would have. The closer the information is to your real name the easier it is for someone to harm you with it. The details of your illnesses, the exact times you will be away from home, the exact places you stay on vacation and the exact schools your children attend are all bits of casual information that could come back to haunt you later. Even where you shop has the potential to tip off anyone who would want to harm you in particular.

I don't want to make anyone paranoid, but we all need to be reminded occasionally to be careful.

Comments

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

Facebook supposedly lets you limit who can see what you post, but there's no way to limit who sees how you respond to other people's posts--it all shows up in the ticker, and next week will all be aggregated in the "timeline." I think of FB as a bumpersticker and try never to post something I don't want everyone in the world to read.

Too bad.

And Google's going to be just about as bad.