Goodbye Privacy

Imagine you sit in a coffee shop and then you see this amazing guy. What do you do? Check Facebook if you find him and some information about him? Or do you even just use a simple app and write something on his own Facebook page, so he might notice you? This is possible if you use an open WiFi hotspot like the one in the coffee shop for surfing the internet. You only need a special app on your phone and then you can post something on someone else's site in her name. You can also read her emails or fill her shopping cart while she's shopping on Amazon.

We wanna look closely, but what do we expect to see?
pic by Beverly & Pack

The development is vast. But as good as technology is right now, there are also many risks. Just last week, while I was watching Modern Family, I thought of that again. They wanted to sell a house to a special customer and because no other guy was interested, they used all kinda social media sites to figure out what he likes and what not, that they can decorate the house just the way he wants it. But at the end, Cameron talks about the dog door they made, and he said that it would be perfect for his dog Otis. So that confused the guy: total strangers know that he has a dog named Otis.

How would you feel in such a situation? Someone you never saw and met before knows everything about you. That's the price a celebrity has to pay. She is followed everywhere she goes, and then there are pics of her on the internet, pics she's not even aware of were taken and published. And people come to her, kissing and hugging her, talking like they would know her for years. Some "fans" follow their stars to get closer to them, they wanna know everything. But imagine someone follows you and no matter where you go, you can't be sure who's watching you. Scary, isn't it?

Some people post everything on Facebook. Last week I talked to a friend that maybe in 50 years our grandchildren can read what we did these days. Like my grandchild will come to me, say: Granny, 50 years ago, you were in that coffee shop with this handsome man, remember? And I will just look at my sweetie kid, wondering if I ever told her about it. My friend said till then Facebook won't exist anymore, but I said that all the information won't be lost, they will still be on the internet, because what once was there, will never be deleted.

But why is it important to many guys to tell everyone every little detail like where they are? They write now I'm with Max and Milly at McDonald's, two hours later, the three are at Burger King, then Starbucks, or whereever, and some guys even post when they do their business in the bathroom. 50 years later his grandchild might be asking: were you successful? and he will probably just be confused.

is the next step that we all have a QR code and people can come with their phones, scan your code and know everything about you?
pic by Richard Cabrera

When last year college started and I added a few of my fellow students on Facebook, one was pretty scared when I knew her middle name and birthday. She was shocked, asked me how I know these things, coz it was our first week at college and she didn't tell me, and then I said it's on your Facebook page. So many guys are not aware that they put all these information about themselves on the internet. We become more and more like a glass. It scares us that total strangers know everything about us, but we make this possible. That's why I don't put too private things on the internet and why I don't use open WiFi hotspots. I don't want people to fill my Amazon cart with 5 TV sets, and then when I place my order I bought not only a book and a game, but also these 5 TV sets.

Now you say okay it's kinda scary when people know stuff about me, but I like to know stuff about new people, to figure out if I can like him or not. So when I meet someone I google him and try to figure out what he is like, to know the people he spend time with, and so on. Then I can decide if I really wanna know him in real life or not. It's just to make sure that he's not dangerous or something. But some years ago this wasn't possible, and isn't it better to get in touch with the real person and not her virtual accounts? I love to get in touch with people using the internet, but I still prefer to meet people in real life, that's how you really get to know someone.

Back in the coffee shop this man walks to me, tells me stuff about my family, knows my brother's name, where I live, knows my friends, where I love to be, what I love to watch and what music I like. It's like he knows everything about me, though I never met him before. No, you don't have to be a star anymore to be in such a situation. Luckily this didn't really happen to me, but thinking about it makes me shiver.

The amazing Garfunkel & Oates have a song called Google, singing about using the internet to find out as much as possible about someone:

Do you use Google to find out something about a person you just met? What information do you share on social media sites?

Criminal minds: Teenage life

It may sound like the name of a new crime show, but it’s not. It’s actually real, unfortunately. You maybe know the show Criminal Minds and maybe you also ask yourself while watching the show, what brings some people to have such mean thoughts. Something has to be wrong in their head, not from the beginning of course. Something that happened to them in their past, that changed the way they see things.

Yesterday I heard and tweeted about the so called Facebook murder. A 15-year old girl who paid money to a 14-year old boy to kill her friend because she wrote on Facebook that the girl had intercourse with several boys. I wrote lately about the risks of the internet and most of all the social network sites, and so I thought I should write about this, too. 

be careful what you put on the internet

What that one girl wrote and published for everyone on Facebook should have been kept private. No one should care about someone else’s sexual life. That shouldn’t be discussed in public. If it’s the person herself who publishes some of her private life, well, it’s her thing, but in my mind, no one has to write about another person’s private life. It’s all on them with whom, how and what ever they do behind closed doors - as long as both want that, it’s okay. I know the girl was only 15 and so very young, but I don't wanna discuss this here either.
I just ask myself is something like that already a reason to kill that person who wrote something like that about you?

Certainly not. In my mind there is no reason at all to take someone’s life, or hire someone to do that. I don’t understand what brings people to do that? Has that girl not seen any other solution? Maybe she could have talked to her, asked her why she did that, asked for an apology. Why didn’t she do that? Why did she pay someone to....? Did she want to show everyone her power like no one writes such stuff about me, or you see what will happen? What’s in her mind, that let her had such thoughts and really hired someone to kill her own friend? And why did the boy do that? To impress the girl?

So many questions are still unanswered. It all sounds like an episode of Criminal Minds, but it’s real. It started on the internet, maybe the other girl felt safe as she only saw her computer in front of her while typing the words. The internet makes so much possible but it also changed our life. What we write and what we do, is saved - FOREVER. And even when we think that no one would ever read what we once wrote or only the people who should know, well, it’s not true. There’s no cache for our real life, but for our virtual one. So maybe you write someone, someone else you’d not considered of reads it and might get it wrong. 

You can reach more people in less time, even if you didn’t mean it in a negative way, you always have to be careful what you put on the internet. And we shouldn’t pay that much attention what people wrote about us. Some things can hurt us, but the people who are really important to us know the truth. You can’t be liked by everyone, but that makes a 'real' person. Who knows about her good and bad sides, and has the bad one’s under control. People should know how to handle the internet correctly, kids should learn that in school. Not everyone or everything on the internet is good and true. I think when the kids would be prepared, something like that might not had happened.