google +
 

Google+ insisting on having your real name.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14312047

Hmm.

Not particularly in favour of my real identity being readily available online to anyone who wants to know. (although perhaps I'm feeling secure in the fallacy that this is not already the case)

I'm not a 'social network user' as I'm in favour of my real life friends communicating in person, rather than from behind a computer screen - some of those who are into facebook etc have already lost touch a little as they now do all of their social communication via that stupid website.

In some ways I think social networks actually take some of the personal connections between friends and weaken them by divorcing the actual face to face communication in favour of something entirely more artificial, requiring less effort or thought. Not forgetting all of that farmville/mafia wars time wasting crap.

The quote above demonstrates the problem as I see it - anyone who I already know (or want to know), knows who and where I am, so why would they need to 'search' for me online when they already know me/my online alias?

The spokesman's rationale is spurious as far as I can see.
The arguments about pseudonyms encouraging trolling also fall flat - decent folk will generally behave so (with the occasional wiggle), whist ****s will always behave like ****s. This forum is a good demonstration of this principal - there's often a little friction but decent communities will remain so because that decency is essentially inherent in its user base.

I guess the exchange for using the social network service is trading away your identity/personal information for access to the site, instead of paying a traditional subscription; It's my understanding that sites like facebook and google+ make their money from advertising and advertisers paying for access to a pool of information containing the habits and interests of millions of users around the world which they can use to more accurately target their products to those who will be interested in using or buying them.

Now I appreciate the occasional advert for something I didn't know about that turns out to be of great interest to me, but these are like one in a million chances. Most of the time I already have an interest in something, meaning I've done the leg work of finding out about it and the things associated with it. To a large degree advertising is already too late to catch my interest in something 'new' because it's not new to me.

I cannot be the only person who looks at this the same way; surely advertisers are not relying on my 'one in a million' hit on target for their revenue? That would seem a little bit random despite scaling that up over tens of millions of users?

Not using it so I'm not really bothered but having said that, my Hotmail account is my real name.

Same as jim apart from I don't use Hotmail.

After all if your applying for a job the person at the other end dose not want to see for example...

superbigtits@knockers.uk

Now that would be dependant on the position one might be applying for :03:

There may be some truth to that. As there is plenty information already volunteered by the user which makes it easier to find a positive ID of someone.

For instance I know you are a draftsman, found that here on Subsim. With CAD experience in refrigeration engineering and design in regards to store planning, fitouts, pipework, fire-alarm installation & design and mechanical lift and conveyor systems.

With a friend in the right place I could check with Motor Vehicles and get a list of forklift operators licenses issued since July 2010 to a married, male with a birthday of 6-14-76.

btw did you ever buy that 3 door mitsubishi shogun to replce that old dihatsu?


I'd have different sign-in names for each blog or website, ditch the location and date of birth.



.

What is there to stop you from using a fake name? :hmmm:

:O:

See? that's what I'm talking about.

There are one or two inconsistencies, but I'll not correct you on them ;)

But you had to go and look, however cursory an investigation, to find those things. Probably on different sites, via a simple-ish search (based on username and other volunteered information as part of a wider interaction on the web) or by looking on sites I've previously mentioned*

It might not be considered much with such information disseminated across various internet history/places, but it's not all collated in one site that requires all this information, by default, to be displayed openly and for unsolicited use by others.

Information about me that is volunteered is different - although that in itself is a vague description, and one I'm not quite satisfied with given the complex nature of this new and powerful technology that is everything and nothing all at the same time.

There are other places I'm a member of with different username and details of location - I am still who I am here, and in other places, however - but you make a good point, one that worries me, in its demonstration, not at all.
But most of these places, given their nature, I have referenced or recommended between them. For example, links to here from another site for mods for SH3, or links to another forum from yet another website to give advice and help with building a new pc system for a soon to be released FPS game. They all support each other in a ... well, a web of interconnection, strands crossing and recrossing a virtual history and map.

A clear demonstration of what the internet had the potential to become following its inception. Clearer still in its evolution to date, surpassing even those wild imaginings of a few decades ago.

And that is where things start to go a little iffy. One of the great things about the internet is its openness. For an individual to choose to give out what they will, nor not.

With such a vast, vast database of all the lives, interests and experience of everyone who has even the smallest web footprint, it is hard not to imagine someone not trying to profit from it. To put a finger on it, that is what I find disconcerting, not necessarily that certain things about me are there for others to make connections with as you did, but that they will be used for some other purpose not entirely benign.

I'm not interested in how individuals choose to view me and my avatar. How business organisations, and perhaps one day, governments (with all of their arbitrary decision making), choose to view me is quite another matter altogether.

For some reason information about people, being harvested, and in some cases required for access, to be used as currency (for that is what I believe information is becoming with the advent of the emerging social network phenomena) seems open to all manner of, as yet un-dreamed of, abuse and corruption.
Knowing human nature for what it generally lives up to being when money becomes involved, I am less than convinced it will choose the 'good side'. To use google's own mission statement against them 'Don't be evil' - well, you can always try, but that does not imply or require success....

* Based on username and location, google says #6 (and also #4 :roll:) on the list is a pretty obvious match. And yes, my mum did trade the dihatsu for the shogun; there have been one or two little teething problems, namely the alarm being a little temperamental and more recently a problem with the cooling system (a burst hose and then the water-pump needed replacing). Other than those things, and given the age of the vehicle, she's getting better use out if it than the dihatsu, which served well for many years.

Good point but I honestly don't know enough about it to answer with any level of certainty :hmmm: