Some people are more cautious than others, and I can fully understand and appreciate the need to be careful about what you divulge on social media. I'm not one of those, however. Throughout my time on the Internet and even before, on BBSs, I have not done this. On computer bulletin boards and in the early days of computers, file names couldn't use spaces and were limited to eight digits. With those limitations, I used "kfander" but, otherwise, I have mostly used my real name, posted photos of my home, and talked about a bunch of stuff. My address is on the "About" page here, and so far I've done okay, not that I suggest others do that.
It probably won't happen in our lifetime but with carbon credits, garden registrations....google can show where the smoke is coming from a woodstove and other transgressions to be punished. I'd rather not give any more help to them than necessary.
I agree with what you are saying; but I do not worry about it anymore. I think that if our government wants to know all about someone, they have the skills and devices necessary to do that, regardless of what the person does to stay hidden. Even people who go totally off-grid and do not use electricity can be spied on by the government when they want to do that. Satellites can find the little roads and backwoods cabins with no problems, like you mentioned about Google Earth. I don’t do anything that would be of any interest to the government (or anyone else, really), live a boring life, and I have no reason to think that my life is being spied on, but the other side of that is that, if they are spying on all of us, then I do not think that we can stop them from doing it. So, I just live my life , go on about my business, and do not worry about it. In order to be even a little safe, a person would have to hide in the wilderness and live an off-grid life that I am totally unwilling (and unable) to do at this stage of my life.
It wasn't the privacy issue so much with me with posters who do this. I've come to the same conclusion as you, Yvonne, but when someone constantly seeks this attention from others, it is, I believe, a psychological problem. I avoid those threads as I want to enjoy good conversation, idea exchanges, or simply the back and forth humor.
I worry as much about individuals with nefarious motive as I do about government intrusion, although a large portion of my concern may be unfounded, and is caused more by media hysteria than by true facts.
We were getting Instant Messages ("N" area of Facebook) coming from my wife's older sister. The messages were telling us about a government program and the messages were getting quite persuasive for us to apply. My wife kept telling the messages, with my SIL's Facebook page picture in each one, "no thanks". One such message said "I'm at a doctor's appointment and can't talk right now". We ended up calling the SIL and.............she was not at a doctor's appointment and definitely wasn't sending us the messages. I told her that I "Unfriended" her on Facebook and that stopped the messages.
I get that but, sometimes, people are just looking for something to talk about, or maybe it helps them to vent their frustrations, albeit in a way that won't do anything to make the problem go away. Thinking back to a guy I had next door to me who had decided to open a dog kennel in his side yard, facing my bedroom, it didn't annoy me enough to introduce myself to him and complain, but I'm sure I mentioned it here, and if the subject of annoyances were to come up in discussion elsewhere, I'd probably have brought it up.
What you experienced was a common facebook spam hoax. What happens is the spammer makes a facebook account using someone’s name (in this case , your wife’s sister), and then they copy pictures and information to make it look like a real account, and start sending our friend requests to everyone in the real person’s friend list. Most people just assume that their friend was having issues with face book and had to send out a new request, so they accept it with out really looking to see that it is a clone of the original and not really the person they know as a friend. They do all this to scam you by telling you that you can get a free grant of a lot of money (or something similar) and that they want to tell you all about it. The end result, is that if you fall for the scam, they get you to send personal financial information to them , thinking you are getting a $10,000 free grant. The best thing is to report this to facebook when it happens so they can go after the scammer and stop them.
I have both FB and Twitter accounts - but hardly, if ever use either because I found them too much of a hassle to use. I 'hate' emails and wouldn't have one if it wasn't for the fact that you have to have one in order to join forums and other sites you may want to join, but I always untick the boxes for receiving emails wherever possible. In case anyone is wondering - my hatred for emails stems from the first email account I had with yahoo and being absolutely 'flooded' with spam mail 'every single day' and you wouldn't believe how many of these were advertising 'Viagra' !!! Even if I'd been a male it would have been too much In the end I ditched yahoo and went with another email account - but my hatred for emails has remained ever since.
I have a paid web-based account now, and I have gotten 0 spam in the year or so I have had it. I use another account for business, so only personal stuff goes to my paid account.
I forgot I posted in here ! I'm glad that worked out for you Don For me though, the idea of paying for something that I would rather not have to have doesn't seem to make sense.
I was very lucky that about 27 years ago I went sailing and I have never seen TV since so I missed all that programing lucky. Now with Social media most all have the same programing and censorship but there are a few coming out that are free from the programing and information is valid. If we can get more censorship free we might brake the old media