Today I was contacted by someone at work. She graduated school with me and our 20 year reunion was coming up. Why did she contact me at work? It was the only way they were able to track me down. I was included in promotional material by name. She told me I "was the hardest to track down"and I had to smile.

This is just a small anecdote about privacy practices and their real life impact (and how your employer can undo all of it, I guess)

  • InfiniteGlitch@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    7 months ago

    Call me pessimistic, but I do think:

    • Privacy is an illusion.
    • Control is an illusion (a reference to Mr. Robot).

    Certainly, we can do a lot to have more privacy, but it is an illusion to think that we have complete control over it. Especially with social media, jobs, and today’s technology.

      • illah@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        I’ve come to realize most of the privacy hawk arguments are based on imagined risks, and the average privacy enthusiast is an ideologically driven idealist. What is the end goal beyond pumping one’s ego?

        Especially internet privacy hawks are the worst. It just doesn’t really matter at all. Unless you are all cash, off the grid, no phone or bank account etc, you will leave a huge trail. Instagram figuring out I like basketball is the least of my worries.

        • ForgotAboutDre@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          Most aren’t going to thwart governments, serious policing, private investigations or very determined individuals. But they will reduce their exposure to advertising and online profiling. We are bombarded with soon many businesses try to constantly sell things and manipulate the way we think and act for thier own profit. Privacy is a series of small acts that can reduce hostile businesses effectiveness.

          • mihor@lemmy.ml
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            7 months ago

            As an anecdote I once tracked down a person who threatened me. The only things I had were their likeness (whilst wearing a mask!), the car and plates (which were only useful to positively identify the person was correct when I called the phone number and asked ‘do you own such and such car with such and such plates’) and the fact that the person worked for a law firm (not specific) using only osint.

        • thayer@lemmy.ca
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          7 months ago

          Yep. My only real goal is to reduce the amount of advertising I’m exposed to on a daily basis, and to that end it’s working…for now.

          No cable, no streaming services, no broadcast radio, automated downloads of media, ad blockers everywhere, DNS sinkhole, etc. Thankfully, it’s all low maintenance once in place.

        • umbrella@lemmy.ml
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          7 months ago

          while i dont 100% disagree, cambridge analytica is a great example of how profiling our personality to the T can be used against us. thats not including the good points made by other posters here.

          LLMs will be able to do more damage in a bigger scale, it only feels imaginary because you can’t really see it with your eyes, but would you let me install a RAT on your devices?

    • Cyrus Draegur@lemm.ee
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      7 months ago

      Morality is just as much of an illusion, doesn’t mean you should be allowed to smash someone’s skull in with a brick. Social constructs and social contract were dreamed up by our species because they work and have utility.

      So we better fucking do everything we CAN to sustain the "illusions*.

      • InfiniteGlitch@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        7 months ago

        It seems like my comment has upset you or at least agitated you, if that’s not the case – it’s the impression you gave me.

        I never said that we should ‘’not do everything we can’’; of course, we should. But that certainly does not mean we control everything. No matter how hard you try and how well you manage to maintain both privacy and control, at some point there will be a ‘’leak’’. Not by you but perhaps by your job, your family, friends or acquaintance. There are to many external things to have 100% control.

        In today’s era, both privacy and control are truly mere illusions because you can maintain your privacy and believe you are in control, yet somewhere along the way, you leave a trail behind, especially with technology. I’m not sure why you brought ‘’morality’’ into the discussion of privacy and control – because that’s a whole other argument. This post and my comments were merely about these two.

        Though, I did not expect my comment to get this much attention. It’s just my personal opinion, you can agree and disagree.

      • FiskFisk33@startrek.website
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        7 months ago

        Morality is not an illusion, it’s a social construct.

        Absolute privacy is an illusion, because it doesn’t really exist, and if you believe you have achieved it you are fooling yourself.

        they are not really comparable concepts.

  • Got_Bent@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    I had this argument with my boss and lost. They made all of us take photos that they posted on the company website. I said I’m working pretty hard on making myself invisible and don’t appreciate being forced to out myself like this. Tough shit. My name picture and contact info are out there for all to see.

  • pruneaue [she/her]@infosec.pub
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    7 months ago

    My 10y reunion is coming up, and im like 99% sure that nobody will be able to find me lol.
    Im not in contact with anyone, and ive even changed my name and as far as i know none of them know the new one either :')

  • d3Xt3r@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    I have a Google Alert set up, so I get notified in case my name pops up on the web. A month after I joined a new company, I got an alert - turned out that their internal directory page was exposed to the public web. I was pretty livid - all this time I was proud of maintaining good anonymity, looking up my name never returned anything meaningful on Google. So I complained to my boss about this, and he said it was actually a bug/misconfiguration - which they were already aware of, but didn’t bother fixing it because no one complained. I was super pissed and made it very clear that it was a violation of my privacy and I wanted it taken down ASAP. Thankfully my boss was understanding and got it fixed. Then I had to report the page to Google. It took a while, but it was finally gone from the search results.

    • Preflight_Tomato@lemm.ee
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      7 months ago

      To help with this in the future, you can also create several fake results sharing your real name. Stuff like a blogger with one post not in your writing style, etc… This will dilute searches with disinformation. Removal of real data is important, but you can also confuse anyone looking.

      • Natanael@slrpnk.net
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        7 months ago

        You could use an AI generated fake face and fake history too if your name is unique to make people think they either found the wrong person or make them unsure of the other listings mentioning you with only your name as an identifier

  • Th4tGuyII@kbin.social
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    7 months ago

    In terms of online presence I think one has to be careful about becoming too private - at what point do you become so untrackable that even people you would like to find you (I.e. old friends) can’t anymore.

  • TCB13@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    I guess you can ask her how she managed to track you… later on do the necessary adjustments.

  • jet@hackertalks.com
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    7 months ago

    Anyone can be found, the only question is how much effort people are willing to put into finding them.

  • Possibly linux@lemmy.zip
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    7 months ago

    It seems better than having the FBI track you down (not that they need too as they track all of us all the time)

  • Phegan@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    I’ve been told by classmates that I am on the “unable to track down” list for my school.

  • Etterra@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    Luckily I hated everyone in highschool and they never bothered me again once I left. If this has happened to me I’d have laughed in their face.

  • FarFarAway@startrek.website
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    7 months ago

    Well, at least you were wanted.

    I’m pretty sure they called my cell all week during work hours. Place had horrible reception so if the call came through at all, i couldnt answer cause well, im at work.

    But nobody ever left a message so shrug

  • jsomae@lemmy.ml
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    7 months ago

    Sucks they were able to find you this way. That’s why I always use a pseudonym.

  • barbara@lemmy.ml
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    7 months ago

    It may not always be good to be invisible. You could make a website for yourself sich that people can find you and contact you. You can tgen decide if you want to write back. E.g a mastodon account would be enough. You don’t gave to blog with that acc.