Retirement Forum Posters: How carefully do you guard your real identity here? (social security, relative)
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My mom was scammed by two guys (one conned his way into her house, led her downstairs and the other guy came in to rifle the place, and found no cash to steal, and didn't have time to find the jewelry before my mom heard him and ran up stairs) and the outcry by the media? Well -- they SHOWED HER HOME ON TV.
How's that for bugle call of "Hey a little old lady who is easy to scam lives here!!"
Anyhow, she couldn't take the media harassment -- which is strange because in reality NOTHING HAPPENED, but they kept calling her anyway, so she came out here to visit me for three weeks. While she was here, I went online and found her name and address on all sorts of sites, and had them removed as much possible (some of course couldn't comply) and in fact I went on the news sites and saw some of them had her address and I threatened lawsuits if they didn't take the address down NOW.
When she got home the media was on to the next story. As far as I knew they never caught the guys who did this. We were lucky they were con artists...could have had a different ending...
One thing you need to be careful of is posting photos online if you want to keep where you live private. We had a very nice guy on one of my forums who posted a photo from his front steps. Because he lived in a very small town and had let slip the name of this town, it was easy to look it up on Google Earth and simply figure out where his house was in relation to the houses in his picture.
Personally I don't care if anyone finds me. I do post some controversial opinions and my friends know how I feel about certain things. The ones that wouldn't like it wouldn't be my friends, so I don't care what they think of me. As I said, my main reason for using a user name is because of my old boss. I had a boss who thought the whole office should be one big family and that she should know (and approve) of what we all did and said outside of work. As far as I was concerned, nothing I did outside of work was her business, so therefore the user name.
One thing you need to be careful of is posting photos online if you want to keep where you live private. We had a very nice guy on one of my forums who posted a photo from his front steps. Because he lived in a very small town and had let slip the name of this town, it was easy to look it up on Google Earth and simply figure out where his house was in relation to the houses in his picture.
This happened in my area too. The fellow posted a very specific photo of his distinctive house - clear enough to read his address - and I immediately recognized it due to walking past it frequently while walking my dogs. To make matters worse, he had a link to a blog with detailed info about his wife and family, including trip itineraries and other information that would make it very easy for anyone to pay a visit to his house in his absence. He has since moved away and I never met him. I wish I'd had the opportunity to have a dialogue with him . . . I suspect that he (an elderly man) never gave a thought to security issues.
Personally, I make an effort never to share too much information or too many details. If I seem vague sometimes, it's on purpose!
What bothers me on Facebook is the number of people who post [pictures of their small children on the internet. The people that I am thinking of are the uber-wealthy business owners and heirs and the like.
Maybe I watched "Walk Among the Tombstones". Too closely last night.
It amazes me when supposedly smart and successful people do something that stupid.
I prefer to remain as anonymous as possible on a site like this simply on the off chance that somebody I already know locally will be reading.
One of the beauties of places like this is you may voice opinions or relate experiences or feelings about things that you wouldn't if you were going to run into that person and they now had information that you wouldn't have given them otherwise that could come back to haunt you.
Examples...relating that you are very unhappy or critical of a certain person or even a boss, at work .
Here you have the freedom to discuss it. You wouldn't if you could be identified.
Expressing your opinions on abortion or even telling that you'd had one...or had a child you adopted out that none of your friends knew about. Without being anonymous, I would guess you'd not feel very free to discuss issues like that.
and, interesting perhaps, since I started working on my family tree, I have become quite good at tracking people down on the internet, dead or alive, even though I am more than fairly computer illiterate.
I haven't tried looking for any of you all yet, but just for fun, I made a list of what I think I know about the OP and I think I could find him/her.
If you are correct about being able to find me, then that illustrates our vulnerability. It also illustrates my misjudgment (as expressed in my original post) about the degree to which I have divulged information over the years or my misjudgment about people's skills in putting information together to "find" somebody - possibly both.
In the event you make that effort and are successful, I am requesting that you not post the information on the open forum and that you not divulge it to any other party via direct message. Of course I have no control over that - I would just be counting on and hoping for your good will - and again, that illustrates our vulnerability.
If you are correct about being able to find me, then that illustrates our vulnerability. It also illustrates my misjudgment (as expressed in my original post) about the degree to which I have divulged information over the years or my misjudgment about people's skills in putting information together to "find" somebody - possibly both.
In the event you make that effort and are successful, I am requesting that you not post the information on the open forum and that you not divulge it to any other party via direct message. Of course I have no control over that - I would just be counting on and hoping for your good will - and again, that illustrates our vulnerability.
Very interesting.
When I first 'found' the internet 17 years ago I was much more leery of giving out personal info online. Over the years I realized that nobody was all that interested in me, nobody was going to hunt around for info on me and nobody really cared. I have met quite a few online acquaintances and every single one of them have been exactly as they presented themselves online.
I think I would be pretty easy to track actually. I think most everyone knows where I live, where I work, etc. and I have met a couple of CD folks AT work. That's always a pleasant surprise!
People who do genealogy research online...and I'm one of them...can find lots of things if they just look. I've Googled myself and found things I've posted in genealogy and forum websites. I did find someone with my exact same name but nobody would mistake me for her. She was VERY successful in life and the first thing I found on her was her obituary.
I've met a lot of women in OLD and people randomly with common interests here and there. As far as C-D, I think I may have given out my first name to a couple of posters.
One enterprising person did manage to backtrack through my posts and determine who one of my employers was back in TN, searched for that small employer on LinkedIn, and knew I live in Indiana currently. She was able to find me, but you would need to know a good deal about the local market to have determined that.
One of my accounts with Google (go figure) was pestering me to set up "security questions". I didn't. Finally the site informed me that it had created security questions for me.
It then proceded to ask about things that happened in my life *years* before I was even on the Internet.
It doesn't matter how much you divulge or don't divulge. The Internet is not private. Never was. Never will be.
In the event you make that effort and are successful
You may rely on my goodwill and, even more so, my lack of interest
I do think that we should all be aware that once we venture online, we've opened a portal that goes both ways.
One of my grandfathers was a private dectective in Los Angeles (a clue! ) and taught us how not to leave a paper trail long before I knew anything about the internet.
I believe the original post was more about maintaining our privacy than identity theft, but both are probably valid concerns. If you know someone in real life that has been contacted or scammed, then those concerns may heighten into paranoia.
Something that bothers me about facebook is the number of places on the internet that invite you to sign up using your facebook account. If you read the small print, it tells you that this act gives them access to not only your own information, but also that of your "friends". Ouch.
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dead or alive, even though I am more than fairly computer illiterate.
and, even more so, my lack of interest 
) and taught us how not to leave a paper trail long before I knew anything about the internet.
