StreetView

[Barry Ashcroft]

Boris, thanks... I had a brief thought that you may publish here.

Worryingly, I have just done an audit of my real name and got the shock of my life, so it can happen to anyone!

Gadget / PB, it's not paranoia. My over riding point in all of this is that we *all*, me included, chip away at our identities, sometimes in the belief that no-one really cares. BUT, if anyone cared to actually do the research, we'd find that lots of us have answered boardroom threads that ask "What do you do?" and "How much do you earn?"and "Where in the country are you?" Plus, whenever someone asks "What camera? / What car? / What watch? / What dishwasher etc etc, plenty of us make reccommendations based on stuff we actually own. Put it all together in a searchable medium like the internet, add in pictures of our houses, detailed maps of the area with both topology and overhead photographs and the like, and chances are we have all probably given away more than we realise, me included, and I tend to think that I'm a bit more careful in that area

Given what I've just researched about myself, I have no doubt that Boris will find my identity, but I kinda hope that's all he'll find out for sure. My job annd where I live will NOT be discovered accurately although for my job it'll be in the ball park. Where I live... I really hope not but we'll see! I am very interested to see the results and I trust you guys to play fair!

Boris you have a pm  

Only joking Blatters  

[Lurksalot]

Well Blatters I can't really find a great fault with what you are saying , however, In an area near to where I live , the planning permission at a pub refurbishment insisted on obscure glass to all outside  windows , why? , because the kids could look through , see who was there and would pay their empty houses a visit !!!

I do think you may even spill more beans in the pub than you think , and although cyber details are available , I still believe the majority of burglaries are done by the opportunist scrote who lives around the corner .

[Man On The Clapham Omnibus]

Blatters, unless I'm way off, your name is shared with 722 others in the UK, whereas mine, and those of all my immediate family, is/are unique in the UK because of my unusual surname. All the more reason for care maybe?

[boris77]

I too have an unusual name which with a bit of googling etc does yield some results. Thankfully none of them are of much use (no dob or address info). I shred all my documents so nothing useful ends up in the bin. However a couple of months back someone managed to perform a credit card take over scam. Luckily I found out when I was checking my online account. noticing my home address had change to somewhere in Kent. The credit card company never told me how they did it but it goes to show it can happen to any of us. I now have a password on the account which I have to give every time I call. I'd advise people to add a password if they can.

As an aside the password really does work. I got in an argument with the call centre over it. I was told by the credit card security they would only ask for letters from the password. However the call centre operative wanted the whole password. I refused and she locked my account. The system works. Sort of. :-)

[tex]

i did a search for simply my name firstly last night.. Im black.. Sex offender.. An artist making nude models.. A martial arts specialist.. Amongst others.. But after 2 hours gave up looking.. Lots of people with the same name.. And my name is very common!

I then did a search for my house address.. Only thing that came back is a map..

[Vice Chairman]

Even this bulletin board, for all my 30,000+ posts, you'd be hard pressed to work out where I live or what I do for a living or when I'm home or on holiday or anything else.

I know where you live - I know who you are!!!!!  I know what you do for a living (BTW - Jeremy Kyle is very interested in following up on your occupation and has a prime time spot available for you)

Watch out Blatters - "they" are watching you

[echoz]

Blatters is right though, if you are that way inclined as to not earning a living and take the easy route of making everyone else's lives miserable, it doesn't help that there is all this stuff available online. It's just friendly advice for people who may never have thought of it that way. Face it, criminals are the most opportunist people out there! I remember my old man having a right go at me when I posted pictures of our living room etc when i had a party, had no idea why back then, now it makes sense

[pistonbroke]

Have now fitted a 12ft high razor wire perimeter fence (electrified of course ) machine gun post , mined the driveway , and bricked the chimney up (not even santa gets through uninvited ) Just the moat and drawbridge to fettle now .

feeling safer already      

Felt really sorry for the milkman this morning  

[echoz]

[matt_c]

On a bit of a sidetrack I just had somebody else's bank statement delivered at my home address. The house number is the same, it's the same town and the first part of the post code is the same but that's all. This is not the first time they've done this to me and it does make me wonder if any of my post has been miss-delivered.

So it goes to show that even with safety measures in place (shredding docs etc) the Post Office can still screw it up for you.

[pistonbroke]

On a bit of a sidetrack I just had somebody else's bank statement delivered at my home address. The house number is the same, it's the same town and the first part of the post code is the same but that's all. This is not the first time they've done this to me and it does make me wonder if any of my post has been miss-delivered.

So it goes to show that even with safety measures in place (shredding docs etc) the Post Office can still screw it up for you.

Yup

I think the PO is now run by Bill Gates  

[Blatman]

Even this bulletin board, for all my 30,000+ posts, you'd be hard pressed to work out where I live or what I do for a living or when I'm home or on holiday or anything else.

I know where you live - I know who you are!!!!!  I know what you do for a living (BTW - Jeremy Kyle is very interested in following up on your occupation and has a prime time spot available for you)

Watch out Blatters - "they" are watching you <!--emo&

Well, yes, but you have access to a database that contains privileged information which you are bound by law to keep confidential. GoogleEarth / GoogleStreetview have no such safeguards.

On the other side of the coin check out article 35 of the Police & Criminal Justice Act where it deals with hackers and hacking programmes. The law is so losely worded it *could* be construed that owning a browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox etc etc) is illegal as it equips you to go hacking. It's a badly written law, but law it is. And no debate was had in the commons, and not one single voter in this democracy was asked about it.

And yes you may have gathered that internet security is high on my mind right now. Can't say why, and of course it always was, but it's becoming an increasingly interesting subject. The more I learn, the more I realise that even though I think I've been quite careful and reasonably smart about disposal of documents and old hard drives etc, if what I have learnt today is anything to go by, I may as well just open my front door, 'cos *everything* I do on line, and *everything* about my life is available to anyone with the right tools.

The right tools are a computer and Google and a little bit of brain power...

[Blatman]

Oh and Barry... thanks. I need to go change my underwear