It's all fairly easy to manage if you don't take it to a logical extreme.

rglullis · on March 31, 2012

I'd say the examples I gave are far, far from any logical extreme. TFA mentions how just by crossing two (apparently) disparate networks, you get people potentially being harassed by complete strangers.

All I'm trying to say is that I don't see how to reconcile the idea of having a "public lifestyle" (i.e, let personal information be freely available to anyone that bothers to go look for it) and being able to have a controlled disclosure of personal data.

ahelwer · on March 31, 2012

Well in my view, "sharing everything with everyone" reaches a vertex on the continuum. Clearly I'm not putting stuff out there that I wouldn't tell to, say, an acquaintance I met at a party.

You raised concerns over someone breaking into my house. I believe we want to stay away from the "you should be afraid of people" argument.

So I suppose your concern is that I would rather some information I leak out remain private. Sure. So what? Then you have to worry about things that you wouldn't want an acquaintance at a party to know. What are those things, how would they get online, how often, and what would the impact be? It's better just not to worry in my opinion, instead of running around putting out fires when a friend of yours on Facebook or Twitter publicly posts that it's your birthday.

rglullis · on March 31, 2012

I guess we are talking about different things. If you are analyzing what it is what you disclose, and the consequences of it being out in the open, the impact etc... then it's no longer a "public lifestyle", it's just that you feel comfortable putting some information online when other people don't. There is no argument to be made.

But the whole point about the OP that started this discussion of ours was not about information that people are comfortable to share with people they trust. It's about how people not realizing about the information leaking to people they don't know. You seem to dismiss that with the idea that it's a false sense of security. We could argue about that, but it's besides the point.

What I wanted to point out is that it's not just about security. It's about trust. And trust does not with blacklisting post-facto. It works by whitelisting prior known people. The people who got surprised by discovering they were visible on some creepy website had to learn that the hard way.