internet dirt digging
Posted: Wed Apr 14, 2004 1:24 am
i keep a lifelike presense on the net under my nick "roid". my real name is Jordan Press.
i use the alias roid everywhere because i want people to recognize me and be able to track me down if they need to. as a result my nick "roid" has a lot of exposure on the net, i can google for it, look around irc logs, newsgroups, and find a lot of stuff that i said and was involved in.
if websites go down that i have been involved in, you can still check the internet archive. it's like everything you do on the internet is recorded, written in stone.
now, i'm not particularly scared, i don't care that ppl can look me up and see some possibly embarasing stuff i've said. we've always known of this "feature" of the internet and sometimes it's pretty handy. sure sometimes ppl can quote something you regret saying, but it's not really done too much on the net.
with this huge online exposure we're all kindof internet citizens, most of us have something of ourselves invested in the internet. i am very good at finding information on "internet citizens", i often have to do it in my research. it's not really hard. and more often than not you will be able to find enough pieces of information, one leading the the next, all clues, you'l find enough to form a good dosier on anyone who has a lot of web presence. nicknames can be easily tracked to REAL names, it's seriously not hard.
now think of this:
what if you were running for president?
people can easily dig stuff up in real life, and with the kindof archiving abilitys of the internet: absolutely ANYTHING you have said online could be dug up, analysed, and used against you.
take the porn thread in this forum as an example.
seriously, i don't really care what people could dig up on me if they wanted to. we all accept that anything could be dug up on us, so luckily we all accept that things could be dug up on other people online. in otherwords, we give people slack, because we know that one day it could be US that someone is vomiting slander on.
but again... what if you were running for president?
we all know how stupid and gullable most people are.
you just KNOW that every one of us, with the help of our eternal internet ghosts, can be painted.
no-one's clean.
and in the world of politics it doesn't take much to spin an otherwise harmless quoted joke into powerful character slander.
what say you
i use the alias roid everywhere because i want people to recognize me and be able to track me down if they need to. as a result my nick "roid" has a lot of exposure on the net, i can google for it, look around irc logs, newsgroups, and find a lot of stuff that i said and was involved in.
if websites go down that i have been involved in, you can still check the internet archive. it's like everything you do on the internet is recorded, written in stone.
now, i'm not particularly scared, i don't care that ppl can look me up and see some possibly embarasing stuff i've said. we've always known of this "feature" of the internet and sometimes it's pretty handy. sure sometimes ppl can quote something you regret saying, but it's not really done too much on the net.
with this huge online exposure we're all kindof internet citizens, most of us have something of ourselves invested in the internet. i am very good at finding information on "internet citizens", i often have to do it in my research. it's not really hard. and more often than not you will be able to find enough pieces of information, one leading the the next, all clues, you'l find enough to form a good dosier on anyone who has a lot of web presence. nicknames can be easily tracked to REAL names, it's seriously not hard.
now think of this:
what if you were running for president?
people can easily dig stuff up in real life, and with the kindof archiving abilitys of the internet: absolutely ANYTHING you have said online could be dug up, analysed, and used against you.
take the porn thread in this forum as an example.
seriously, i don't really care what people could dig up on me if they wanted to. we all accept that anything could be dug up on us, so luckily we all accept that things could be dug up on other people online. in otherwords, we give people slack, because we know that one day it could be US that someone is vomiting slander on.
but again... what if you were running for president?
we all know how stupid and gullable most people are.
you just KNOW that every one of us, with the help of our eternal internet ghosts, can be painted.
no-one's clean.
and in the world of politics it doesn't take much to spin an otherwise harmless quoted joke into powerful character slander.
what say you