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So why don't you put your location under your avatar?

danpass

danpass

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Jun 27, 2009
2,796
641
Glory
The overwhelming majority don't put it there and I was curious about that. :)
 
Many people like to remain as anonymous as possible on the internet. I am one of those people.
 
It's easy to find information about people if one looks - there's no privacy on the 'net anymore. I'd just prefer to make them work for it.
 
Study

I remember reading a study a few days ago where a web-pro demonstrated that with just three pieces of ino-

D.O.B., zip code, and sex

-you can identify an internet user with like 90% accuracy or something.

Scary stuff.

I cant recall where I saw this, has anyone else heard this before?
 
MattSepeta said:
I remember reading a study a few days ago where a web-pro demonstrated that with just three pieces of ino-

D.O.B., zip code, and sex

-you can identify an internet user with like 90% accuracy or something.

Scary stuff.

I cant recall where I saw this, has anyone else heard this before?
Click to expand...

Quantity or quality of sex? :)

ethical said:
Many people like to remain as anonymous as possible on the internet. I am one of those people.
Click to expand...

OP, duh! :) There was one particular user on here that had his full name as a user name, which eventually led to people looking at him on Facebook, emailing his professor (I'm still not sure I believe that), and some other stuff, since he also had his location listed. I'm especially amazed that some of the women do this.
 
Pick whichever one closes the question for you:

  1. My current location is so secret, if I did divulge it, I'd have to kill you.
  2. My current location is more a state of mind than a physicality.
  3. My current location is sealed by court order. I don't want the US Marshal to have to relocate me again.
  4. My current location is none of your business.
 
ah so it is paranoia






:p



State is good enough. sure the full name, etc is pushing it. Sometimes its tough to know where someone is coming from in their post if there is no idea of their location.

.
 
-aggie- said:
OP, duh! :) There was one particular user on here that had his full name as a user name, which eventually led to people looking at him on Facebook, emailing his professor (I'm still not sure I believe that), and some other stuff, since he also had his location listed. I'm especially amazed that some of the women do this.
Click to expand...

:eek:...

Nah my privacy settings are so tight on Facebook, I'm not worried... :p
 
My location gives indication of when to expect a reply, and when i should expect a reply.

I know some people in the sub-forums i frequent will not reply until it is the middle of the night for me and i expect they know i wont reply till i get up.
 
I'm posting just so that I can see what my location is. I never really look at my location, or anyone elses.



EDIT: Haha, I like mine. Not changing it. :p Besides, I mention my location in threads when appropriate.
 
Mr. McMac said:
What kind of information can you find out about Mr. McMac. It's not my real name and I don't use it in any other forums? Just curious..
Click to expand...

It depends on information in your posts, not just your profile. If you say you watched a semi-unpopular movie and then someone has that 'anonymized' Netflix data with movies and zipcodes, they could correlate the two to find potential matches. Even if you never gave your timezone, someone might look at all the timestamps of your webposts and make a guess on that. So that could limit the number of zipcodes to a specific timezone.

This sort of 'data mining' is or can be automated. Basically, someone does research first to find the sort of 'revealing' information that can help correlate things. Some of this would be like the 'statistical improbable phrase' on Amazon, but some of it would just be a list of all job descriptions. They dump your messages, and filter for those to see which ones pop up. The most common one might be what you actually do for a living.

I think if you limit yourself to revealing information in a narrow area per website (and use different identifiers), you're pretty safe. If you're posting in 'community' discussions, you'll probably reveal something that can be correlated to another website where you've said the same thing.

Just me typing this sort of response, marks me as someone who probably thinks about data processing. (In fact, if you look at my past posts, you'll see I mostly reply in the Programmer's forum.)
 
-aggie- said:
OP, duh! :) There was one particular user on here that had his full name as a user name, which eventually led to people looking at him on Facebook, emailing his professor (I'm still not sure I believe that), and some other stuff, since he also had his location listed. I'm especially amazed that some of the women do this.
Click to expand...

Women will look me up on Facebook and email my professor if I use my real name? Woah!

Arn, can I get a name change??
 
I try to stay as anonymous as possible on the internet. Although anybody who has my IP (e.g. arn) could track me really precisely via GeoIP services very easily.
 
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