Hunter S said...
So what's the deal Groper? I've got a name and it's floating around the web cause of the type of work I do. Plus I'm listed in the white pages - which is on the web. It's pretty hard to avoid if your out there doing stuff.
Should I be worried about this? I'm real cautious about letting out any other info
For the benefit of internet neophytes....:
People frequently confuse Privacy with Secrecy, but the difference is not that hard to grasp. (see Wikipedia.org)
If you start posting to a website forum under a real name the most serious risk to you is defamation. It’s much harder (if not impossible) to defame (in the moral not legal sense) a fictitious identity, so it should be #1 in your arsenal of internet protection tools. However it’s extremely easy to seriously defame a real identity on the internet, and extremely difficult to undo the damage, or pursue the offender through the courts. A 15yo minor can quite happily publish lies about a person thinking its funny and not only be immune from legal consequences, but has no money to pay for the damages even if you win your case. Generally however, it’s the web site publisher who is sued for internet defamation, but if the defamation is spread over many sites the cost of effective legal action may be way out of reach.
This is a serious problem in defamation laws, which now make it cheaper to allow people to seriously defame you, than it is to protect your rights at law. Defamation is now so rampant on the internet that people don’t even see it as defamation anymore. This is particularly the case if the website is outside Australia.
A lot of posters to Seabreeze do not have vulnerable assets (eg businesses, public image (etc)) to protect, so they slag off at people who do need to protect their privacy, that is, do need protection from defamation, or other malicious acts.
The next most likely form of internet abuse you risk by connecting your real identity with your publications is harassment, or other kinds of victimisation, recrimination or discrimination. People in business and public life are well aware of these issues and take effective steps to mitigate the risk, including physical security of their businesses (etc). However your average ausiie may fail to see the danger, and I see this happening a lot, even on Seabreeze.
That said, it’s also true that there is a lot of good on the internet, and it really depends on the individual as to how much of themselves they want to risk by publishing personal information. When you get to my age (84) and still kite surfing, you realise that life is too short anyway so what the heck – that’s why I publish under my real name of Sand Groper. I also know that nothing you read on the internet can be trusted. Absolutely nothing. Not even my post. Sure, use the internet as a starting point maybe, but verify your internet “facts” before you rely on them.
The current state of play is that the internet savvy people will not risk unnecessarily publishing personal identifying information on the internet unless there is some commercial or other gain to be had. Otherwise they use a false identity - it has nothing to do with secrecy.
