Seriously, I am getting freaked out. Again. Even though I am careful about protecting my personal information online, someone is watching, gathering, waiting… and he knows too much.
How do popup ads know my name, where I live, and what year I graduated from high school? I keep my online professional, personal, editorial, and business identities separate. I don’t even use my real name on Facebook.
How is it then that Facebook can recommend that I “friend” a family member of a former colleague whom I knew six years ago in Iraq? I have no ongoing contact with him, and I never met her. So how did Facebook draw the line to make that connection?
How is it that when I open a website anonymously to look for an airfare deal, I am presented with hotel ads for a city where I stayed earlier this year? I don’t remember posting my hotel arrangements online, so how do they know?
Here’s today’s most freakish. I have spent time over the past three days doing online research about a certain place far away, where I have never lived or worked. During the entire time when I was doing this research I did not log onto my secondary email account. So how is it that when I log onto that account today, I am presented with weather information for that very place?
As much as I wonder how someone is accomplishing all this, my biggest questions are not about ‘how.’ My biggest questions, the ones that bother me the most, are (1) WHO is doing all this watching, collecting, analysis, and exploitation? (2) And WHY?
I’m not just worried about myself, either. If I, a security-minded technophobe, am this visible in the “ether” world, then how visible are people who never consider their own personal security or privacy? What about the people live on their blackberries and internet-capable phones? What about the ones who post pictures of themselves on Facebook and YouTube? What about those who “tweet” their thoughts sixty times a day? I especially worry about the ones who have been so desensitized that they think “reality” television is normal.
The connections we have through the internet can be a wonderful thing. But like other wonderful things – automobiles, alcohol, and advertisements, for example – the internet is best used with caution and in moderation. Remember to behave responsibly online.
· Don’t reveal personal information online.
· Never respond to unsolicited emails.
· Never click on links in emails, no matter who it seems to be from.
· If it seems too good to be true, it probably is. If it seems too horrible to be true, it probably is. Use common sense.
· Ensure all your online financial transactions are via secure connections.
· Don’t drink and tweet.
· Don’t trust anyone whose goal is to get you agitated. They do not have your best interests in mind. This one works in real life as well as online.
· Trust no one you know only through an electronic connection. They might not be who you think they are.
· Use complex passwords. If you use a real word someone will figure it out, eventually.
· Post no pictures you wouldn’t want to see on the front page of your local newspaper. If newspapers seem archaic to you, post nothing you wouldn’t want to see on the evening news.
· Obstruct the collectors, whether they are persons or drones or programs or zombies, every chance you get. I leave it to your diabolical creativity to figure out how to do that.
Thank you for reading Gryphem. I appreciate your time and interest, and the daring you show by your willingness to enter the cyber world to participate in the Gryphem experience.
You may rest assured that Gryphem will never collect personal information without your consent, will never sell your personal information, and will never use any information collected to target you for marketing or exploitation. This has been a public service announcement.
Now be careful out there.
Gryphem
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| Courtesy userfriendly.org |
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