Things to Consider while Blogging, Posting or otherwise Internetting...
So, things to consider. All wise-ass-ery aside. (except for some. Because I'm, you know, Kenova. The asshole - but having a beard makes up for it. Ask half the girls I've spanked.)
Rule 1. If you post it - they will come.
They being web crawlers, and post it meaning put it out there, anywhere. On your phone. On a private server. In an IM to friends one on one. On a memorial site, ten years ago. In an article that some grandmother eventually scanned as part of scanning a newspaper into archives. As a joke tweeted then deleted. On a .Gov email that you both "got rid of". On a private selfie that you keep in that hidden folder on your phone, where you hide all your gay (and selfie) porn. On a friend's phone. On a screen cap. Walking past someone with a digital camera or a phone held up in the "selfie" or "I'm-a-tourist" pose.
If it was taken - web crawlers will eventually find it. A class I've been to numerous times (seven at last count) takes a digital photo taken by a cell phone using a wide angle setting during the Obama inauguration (nine years ago) and a computer blows it up to the point where over 90% of the faces more than half turned in the direction of the phone are recognizable by the (now on hiatus) Google Face or Google Image Search.
More than 90%. Of maybe over a half of a group in a single photograph, of hundreds of thousands of people. On a camera from nine, fucking, years ago. On one today? Who knows.
That folder you have on your phone? The private, hidden, ultra secret password protected gaper porn and selfies one? It probably backs up (without asking you) to Google Images, Dropbox, Redland, Instagram, Pictoria, Picasa, or any of another few thousand sites that your phone is linked to. Generally by software you don't even know is on there.
And if you think shutting off Google uploads and Dropbox will do it - you're a babe in the woods, darling. Half the apps out there are loaded the second you give permission to /another/ app, as a third party install. You'll never see them until you check the list of every single active process - and are you really going to Google the names of each and every one?
Rule 2. Teh Interwebs is furrevers.
I was recently jokingly challenged by a friend, an adult actress (yes, I have friends who don't look as nearly troll-ish as I do) to find anything I could on her before she changed her name, her face, her gender, her body type (lovely what a gym and breast implants will do), her hair color....etc, etc.
Her real (non-work) name is (blank). Her real age is 27. Which means she began adult acting at 23, prior to FFS, given that her first video's rip/upload date is 4 years old. She routinely eats at (blank), and orders Pad Thai near her house in Newtown, PA (address - blank). She grew up as a boy named Chris (blank) (8 different photos, including middle school and high school class photos) and played tennis and soccer. She joined the Navy at 18 (graduation photo printed), left at 20 with a "other than honorable" discharge (she came out as a gay man, I was even able to find the name of her former CO). She had her facial feminization surgery done at the Zukowski center. Chest implants done at Penn Medicine's Plastic Surgery center in downtown Philadelphia. Her father's name is (blank), and he's divorced from her mother (blank), who live a few miles away from each other at in Grove City at (blank) and (blank). Her private facebook profile is (blank), her private phone number is (blank), and her private email address is (blank).
She has been arrested for soliciting 3 times, twice with charges dropped for lack of evidence, once with all charges withdrawn in return for enrolling in a "safe sexwork" program. She has an open bench warrant from Bucks County, PA, for a parking ticket that was never paid.
Sum total of work time - 30-40 minutes online, with a few phone calls. Not a one of them illegal, nor did I ever have to identify myself - people will share information with anyone who asks if you sound polite and official enough. No ID, not even a name, needed.
Number of non-publically accessible sites used - 0.
Okay, so maybe it would take longer for most nuts. I'm a trained investigator, and I already know where one line and one link leads to another. I'm trained as a specialist in this kind of work.
But if I can do it with no real interest in less than an hour - a stalker can do it in a few days or a week.
Rule 3: There's just no hiding anymore, anyway.
You can hide behind Tor, and you have ten different ISPs bouncing you, or maybe an ISP blocker or cloud, and a dedicated server or a hardened VPN line...
(Btw - Tor? People on Tor aren't safe because they're better. They're safe because, unlike most of us, they know how to keep one step ahead of the dogs. They aren't winning through technology - they're winning by exploiting how long it takes to get a warrant, and moving on a day or two before it. You don't hear about it when they get caught - they get buried in a hole before it hits the news.)
It's all wasted money, folks. From the second you sign online for the first time, your privacy is tissue paper to anyone who honestly wants to find out about you. Your behaviors, your shopping choices, that facebook photo where a friend tagged your face ten years ago without telling you, those supposedly "secure" credit card processing programs...they all gather your information and share it. It's part of a program Google purchased called Check Point technologies. Creating a digital, invisible behavioral profile of you, from every little mouse click - until they (every system powered by Skyne...er...Google) can recognize you a few seconds after you open a browser (any browser, btw.)
For the record? Anyone with five dollars, access to the Google app store and your phone (if you put it down for even a few minutes) can install a completely silent, invisible app that lets them flip through your images, hear your calls, read your texts, and copy any contacts you have stored on there. It will even let them look at your emails and your internet surfing, if you have your google account linked (which you have to, 90% off the time now).
You'll never know - once installed, it erases all traces of itself, the download history and all. It's a "child safety app" (suuuuure it is, you fucking perverts.) No, I'm not naming it. But it's one of over a dozen I know about, and the only one on the app store - the others are non-google approved and you can STILL buy them for less than 10 bucks.
Another app lets you "link" your phone to any other phone with a blue tooth system in range. It can even turn some of those blue tooth links on. How many people do you know who know to password protect their blue tooth? Not many...
Another example? Anyone with a few extra minutes and some time on google can install apps that turn their phones into easy to activate recording devices, even when they appear shut off - and upload EVERYTHING heard or videoed directly to a private server, for the cost of a $10 app. It's intended as a self defense application against government abuse. (suuuure it is...)
Last one. If you live in a large city, you know where most business and conversation happens. Your front porch, or the subway station. Neither, not even your porch, is private or protected by law. So anyone with any interest (a stalker, an ex, a baby-mama, a private investigator) can drop their cheap pre-paid cell phone on the bench or in the trash nearby and listen to everything you say. Ponder that the next time you're buying a cheap dime bag of weed.
Rule 4 (last one, I promise): Your privacy was pretty much gone anyway.
I have another friend I want to mention. (I know, right? Kenova has fucking friends?!)
He was an undercover officer working Miami-Dade area, mainly around the airports and just outside the warehouses nearby, as a narco. He spent his days, and a lot of his nights, away from his family. For years he built cases that kept people in Florida safe.
Then one day, his daughter posted a photo with Daddy at her Daddy/daughter dance. A five year old photo. Her 10th birthday happened to be the same day as the D/d dance. Big thing for her. She was smart enough to never post that her dad was a cop, and her mom and brother both knew the drill...she just really wanted that photo to show a few friends.
Unfortunately for the cop, his persona's Papi has a guy that runs google images randomly on his runners and his muscle. He was identified by google image search from a five year old photo. Not even a police photo - just one that was enough to blow his cover as a single, drug dealing scumbag. His position as an undercover narco was blown, and his family had to move (for their safety) to another state. He had to surrender his pension and transfer (with help from FOP, thank god) to another state as a highway cop, because his days under cover were over.
This officer did nothing wrong. He left everything electronic in his car, parked in a lot off the swamps, even went as far as changing clothes and walking to a bus to go home and see his family once a month. No carry over, at all, between his two worlds. He spoke fluent Spanish at work, and his family didn't know he ever went beyond High School Espanol. He never wore a wire, ID, or reported directly to anyone shy of a few pre-arranged drops at coffee shops - about as anonymous as you can get in Miami.
But one photo, five years old, posted unthinkingly by a loving daughter - and his career was over.
The lesson?
Learn to accept that you don't have privacy anymore. Live your life with the understanding that anything you do, online or in spitting distance of a phone, camera, webcam, or witness (who might blog about it later) isn't private. Those days are done. Stop hitting on girls when you're married, stop feeling up that girl at the office, and stop making fun of your boyfriend's dick behind his back. Live like you're supposed to - or at least be honest about how you do.
Privacy is coming to an end.
Adapt, react, overcome.
That's all we can do.
Rule 1. If you post it - they will come.
They being web crawlers, and post it meaning put it out there, anywhere. On your phone. On a private server. In an IM to friends one on one. On a memorial site, ten years ago. In an article that some grandmother eventually scanned as part of scanning a newspaper into archives. As a joke tweeted then deleted. On a .Gov email that you both "got rid of". On a private selfie that you keep in that hidden folder on your phone, where you hide all your gay (and selfie) porn. On a friend's phone. On a screen cap. Walking past someone with a digital camera or a phone held up in the "selfie" or "I'm-a-tourist" pose.
If it was taken - web crawlers will eventually find it. A class I've been to numerous times (seven at last count) takes a digital photo taken by a cell phone using a wide angle setting during the Obama inauguration (nine years ago) and a computer blows it up to the point where over 90% of the faces more than half turned in the direction of the phone are recognizable by the (now on hiatus) Google Face or Google Image Search.
More than 90%. Of maybe over a half of a group in a single photograph, of hundreds of thousands of people. On a camera from nine, fucking, years ago. On one today? Who knows.
That folder you have on your phone? The private, hidden, ultra secret password protected gaper porn and selfies one? It probably backs up (without asking you) to Google Images, Dropbox, Redland, Instagram, Pictoria, Picasa, or any of another few thousand sites that your phone is linked to. Generally by software you don't even know is on there.
And if you think shutting off Google uploads and Dropbox will do it - you're a babe in the woods, darling. Half the apps out there are loaded the second you give permission to /another/ app, as a third party install. You'll never see them until you check the list of every single active process - and are you really going to Google the names of each and every one?
Rule 2. Teh Interwebs is furrevers.
I was recently jokingly challenged by a friend, an adult actress (yes, I have friends who don't look as nearly troll-ish as I do) to find anything I could on her before she changed her name, her face, her gender, her body type (lovely what a gym and breast implants will do), her hair color....etc, etc.
Her real (non-work) name is (blank). Her real age is 27. Which means she began adult acting at 23, prior to FFS, given that her first video's rip/upload date is 4 years old. She routinely eats at (blank), and orders Pad Thai near her house in Newtown, PA (address - blank). She grew up as a boy named Chris (blank) (8 different photos, including middle school and high school class photos) and played tennis and soccer. She joined the Navy at 18 (graduation photo printed), left at 20 with a "other than honorable" discharge (she came out as a gay man, I was even able to find the name of her former CO). She had her facial feminization surgery done at the Zukowski center. Chest implants done at Penn Medicine's Plastic Surgery center in downtown Philadelphia. Her father's name is (blank), and he's divorced from her mother (blank), who live a few miles away from each other at in Grove City at (blank) and (blank). Her private facebook profile is (blank), her private phone number is (blank), and her private email address is (blank).
She has been arrested for soliciting 3 times, twice with charges dropped for lack of evidence, once with all charges withdrawn in return for enrolling in a "safe sexwork" program. She has an open bench warrant from Bucks County, PA, for a parking ticket that was never paid.
Sum total of work time - 30-40 minutes online, with a few phone calls. Not a one of them illegal, nor did I ever have to identify myself - people will share information with anyone who asks if you sound polite and official enough. No ID, not even a name, needed.
Number of non-publically accessible sites used - 0.
Okay, so maybe it would take longer for most nuts. I'm a trained investigator, and I already know where one line and one link leads to another. I'm trained as a specialist in this kind of work.
But if I can do it with no real interest in less than an hour - a stalker can do it in a few days or a week.
Rule 3: There's just no hiding anymore, anyway.
You can hide behind Tor, and you have ten different ISPs bouncing you, or maybe an ISP blocker or cloud, and a dedicated server or a hardened VPN line...
(Btw - Tor? People on Tor aren't safe because they're better. They're safe because, unlike most of us, they know how to keep one step ahead of the dogs. They aren't winning through technology - they're winning by exploiting how long it takes to get a warrant, and moving on a day or two before it. You don't hear about it when they get caught - they get buried in a hole before it hits the news.)
It's all wasted money, folks. From the second you sign online for the first time, your privacy is tissue paper to anyone who honestly wants to find out about you. Your behaviors, your shopping choices, that facebook photo where a friend tagged your face ten years ago without telling you, those supposedly "secure" credit card processing programs...they all gather your information and share it. It's part of a program Google purchased called Check Point technologies. Creating a digital, invisible behavioral profile of you, from every little mouse click - until they (every system powered by Skyne...er...Google) can recognize you a few seconds after you open a browser (any browser, btw.)
For the record? Anyone with five dollars, access to the Google app store and your phone (if you put it down for even a few minutes) can install a completely silent, invisible app that lets them flip through your images, hear your calls, read your texts, and copy any contacts you have stored on there. It will even let them look at your emails and your internet surfing, if you have your google account linked (which you have to, 90% off the time now).
You'll never know - once installed, it erases all traces of itself, the download history and all. It's a "child safety app" (suuuuure it is, you fucking perverts.) No, I'm not naming it. But it's one of over a dozen I know about, and the only one on the app store - the others are non-google approved and you can STILL buy them for less than 10 bucks.
Another app lets you "link" your phone to any other phone with a blue tooth system in range. It can even turn some of those blue tooth links on. How many people do you know who know to password protect their blue tooth? Not many...
Another example? Anyone with a few extra minutes and some time on google can install apps that turn their phones into easy to activate recording devices, even when they appear shut off - and upload EVERYTHING heard or videoed directly to a private server, for the cost of a $10 app. It's intended as a self defense application against government abuse. (suuuure it is...)
Last one. If you live in a large city, you know where most business and conversation happens. Your front porch, or the subway station. Neither, not even your porch, is private or protected by law. So anyone with any interest (a stalker, an ex, a baby-mama, a private investigator) can drop their cheap pre-paid cell phone on the bench or in the trash nearby and listen to everything you say. Ponder that the next time you're buying a cheap dime bag of weed.
Rule 4 (last one, I promise): Your privacy was pretty much gone anyway.
I have another friend I want to mention. (I know, right? Kenova has fucking friends?!)
He was an undercover officer working Miami-Dade area, mainly around the airports and just outside the warehouses nearby, as a narco. He spent his days, and a lot of his nights, away from his family. For years he built cases that kept people in Florida safe.
Then one day, his daughter posted a photo with Daddy at her Daddy/daughter dance. A five year old photo. Her 10th birthday happened to be the same day as the D/d dance. Big thing for her. She was smart enough to never post that her dad was a cop, and her mom and brother both knew the drill...she just really wanted that photo to show a few friends.
Unfortunately for the cop, his persona's Papi has a guy that runs google images randomly on his runners and his muscle. He was identified by google image search from a five year old photo. Not even a police photo - just one that was enough to blow his cover as a single, drug dealing scumbag. His position as an undercover narco was blown, and his family had to move (for their safety) to another state. He had to surrender his pension and transfer (with help from FOP, thank god) to another state as a highway cop, because his days under cover were over.
This officer did nothing wrong. He left everything electronic in his car, parked in a lot off the swamps, even went as far as changing clothes and walking to a bus to go home and see his family once a month. No carry over, at all, between his two worlds. He spoke fluent Spanish at work, and his family didn't know he ever went beyond High School Espanol. He never wore a wire, ID, or reported directly to anyone shy of a few pre-arranged drops at coffee shops - about as anonymous as you can get in Miami.
But one photo, five years old, posted unthinkingly by a loving daughter - and his career was over.
The lesson?
Learn to accept that you don't have privacy anymore. Live your life with the understanding that anything you do, online or in spitting distance of a phone, camera, webcam, or witness (who might blog about it later) isn't private. Those days are done. Stop hitting on girls when you're married, stop feeling up that girl at the office, and stop making fun of your boyfriend's dick behind his back. Live like you're supposed to - or at least be honest about how you do.
Privacy is coming to an end.
Adapt, react, overcome.
That's all we can do.
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