Identity theft

[avevale_intelligencer]

Since I became a regular user of the internet, in order to do what I have done on it, I have supplied my name, address, telephone number, date of birth, card numbers and so on and so forth to approximately fifty squillion people, all of whom swore up and down they were never going to breathe a word of it to anyone else and all of whom could quite easily have been lying through their teeth. If I had not done this, I could not have done what I have done with the internet.

So, as far as I'm concerned, my identity is pretty much lost and gone forever anyway, and there is absolutely no point trying to scare me with stories about the evul commies.

So please, dear internet, lay the frod off. It's done already.

Comments

[keristor.livejournal.com]

This is true. Not only am I in the phone book, so anyone who knows my name and approximate place of abode can find my address and phone number, but for various reasons my address and phone number have appeared on Usenet (and hence on google groups). My date of birth has also appeared in several places. And given my address and name anyone can look up things like my DoB anyway from official sources. And other things banks treat as 'security' questions like my mother's maiden name. OK, my credit card details haven't, but as you say making any transaction with them could have had the details given or sold to anyone. So as far as LJ is concerned, I don't see that they can do any worse with my personal information.

On the other hand, I'm not going to make it easy for criminals by posting them on my LJ posts and profile, just as I don't leave my front door open when I go away for a week. If they want to defraud me they can at least do some work to find the information...

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

But you wouldn't do that anyway, whether LJ was being run from Russia, America, Antarctica or the Moon. It's this thing that now, specifically now that the Russians have taken over, all of a sudden we've somehow got to take it all back or unreveal it or something, or we'll all be targeted by the evil empire. If there's one thing that gets my goat (and there are oh so many, as you probably know) it's being scaremongered about something over which I have no control.

Bottle over here. Genie waaaay the hell over there. And from where I'm sitting (given that I have no personal knowledge of either party in the transaction) it isn't one particle more dangerous now than it was a month ago.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

"it isn't one particle more dangerous now than it was a month ago"

Exactly, and yes you are right that I wouldn't put sensitive information on LJ no matter who was running it. It's amazing what some people will reveal, though, when they think it is "only my friends" (how many people actually know everyone on their LJ 'friends' list?) forgetting about the people who run the thing having full access.