posted on Jul, 24 2012 @ 12:34 PM
Once again - this is really nothing new.
The biggest change since 50 years ago comes from the internet and the accessibility of electronic databases. It's simply easier, tidier, and faster
to organize electronic records than paper records. What would have taken weeks or months to pull up from paper records around the world can now be
done in a few minutes to hours.
Not only have standard records - banking information, property titles, residences, employment, schooling/enrollment, etc made the move; but so have
many means of interpersonal and personal communications. Blogs have become a sort of online journal/diary (people often treat them, psychologically,
as though real people don't read them - just like a private journal/diary.... with interesting consequences), forums have become an international
lunch-room, and sites like facebook act like the hyperactive friend trying to introduce you to every living thing on the planet.
A more recent expansion of the internet comes in the form of smart phones and "cloud" networking. Store much of what you do on the "cloud" so
that you can access it from any of your fifty internet enabled devices (from your music player to your phone... your toothbrush and coffee mug will
probably join the list before much longer).
Interested parties have -always- been able to obtain access to your records. If a record exists on you (and they've been kept for a long time by
various interests for various reasons) - it can be viewed. It may be difficult for someone to do it without proper authorization (just as it may be
difficult to get a look at your friend's journal) - but no defense is perfect. It's merely a matter of how much that information is worth to
retrieve versus the difficulty of retrieving it compared to the available resources of the interested party.
In short - If someone wants to find you - they can. If they want to find out what shopping habits you have, they can. I may not be able to sit
behind a computer and find out what you bought at the store yesterday - but I can hire someone to dig through your trash and find receipts - or
convince someone in the store's security to keep an eye on what you buy... or just hire a third party to watch you.
There are tiers of anonymity/obscurity. Generally speaking, it's not all that easy to find out who a specific personality is on a forum. Provided
they give no clues to their personal identification - the means to trace their account back to a physical location or resource is not readily
possessed, and would likely require access to the servers of the forum (not impossible to do - but a hurdle that's not worth climbing over in most
Now, on Facebook - since you often give your name and address... you've blown that tier out of the water. Further - posting on a forum things that
make it worthwhile to track you down at high costs or information that can be pieced together to create a profile (such as my own comments related to
my father's position and employment, my military status along with unit affiliation, state and even city of residence, etc) will increase the odds of
someone successfully tracking you down from the internet.
Though a Facebook page doesn't necessarily compromise a forum identity - if someone -really- wants to, they can get your 'footprints' from the
forum's server and compare them to sources with known or verified identities. VPNs add an extra layer of protection against this... but if you've
keyed someone up enough to trace you down, it's not likely they will give up (depending upon the resources at their disposal and reason for tracking
you - they'd likely just choose to wait until you made an error rather than hassle with defeating a VPN... but if they have a lot of resources at
their disposal... or can apply legal pressure to your VPN provider - they're less likely to be patient).
I think about it the same way I would investigate a legal case. You do what it takes to identify the bad guy. Then you worry about finding evidence
that can be admitted in court.
I may think that way in regards to people who are genuinely bad and need to be made to go away - but it doesn't mean that others don't think that
way for other reasons. Others may not be looking to convict someone in court - just find them and make them go away (or put pressure on them -
journalists are particularly clever at tracking down individuals for interviews).
At the end of the day - you're never "safe"; you can only present a measure of difficulty to those who would harm you. A thief likely cases your
house once a week or more (depending upon where you live), and makes snap judgments of whether it's worthwhile to try and break in. A sexual
predator eyes you for vulnerability - the list goes on.
The point is... you take reasonable measures and remain aware that the world isn't inherently safe, and learn to live life. Otherwise... you'll end
up driving yourself insane with paranoia.