And a blue box magically appears on Squidoo!
Which leaves me with a fairly large amount to give to a charity, and no charity to give it to. So if anyone knows an aviation charity looking for cash, please let me know.
Otherwise it might be a case of sticking a pin in everyclick, and I really don't want to do that.
Wednesday, 13 January 2010
Tuesday, 12 January 2010
Everyclick - a privacy issue?
I have just heard back from everyclick, and unfortunately with regard to online privacy it s not good news.
Now that their new website has gone live, there are no user privacy settings. This means that if you choose to use everyclick to raise funds, your name will be displayed publicly on their site. If you had a private page previously it is now publicly viewable.
The suggestion they have made is to change the contents of the name field to junk. It is a suggestion I have taken them up on. For users with similar concerns I would suggest doing the same before the page is archived or cached, as Date of Birth is also available though your settings and name and DOB can be used for a lot of malicious damage.
Now that their new website has gone live, there are no user privacy settings. This means that if you choose to use everyclick to raise funds, your name will be displayed publicly on their site. If you had a private page previously it is now publicly viewable.
The suggestion they have made is to change the contents of the name field to junk. It is a suggestion I have taken them up on. For users with similar concerns I would suggest doing the same before the page is archived or cached, as Date of Birth is also available though your settings and name and DOB can be used for a lot of malicious damage.
Friday, 8 January 2010
ID Differentiation online
I find it very interesting how many people assume that a person can only have one interest or hobby, that they can only do one thing. To me this seems very limiting.
For example, as one of my interests I write. I write articles, poetry, stories, games, books and now novels. And this apparently causes a problem. I have been told outright that I should stop writing the award-winning steam train articles simply because I don't work in the field, that a thriller publisher won't pick me up because my name is linked with horror, etc. The obvious solution to this would be ID differentiation: writing under different names on different subjects.
Unfortunately the web now appears to be trying to make everything about one person be under one ID. The trend is to link everything up. This can make life tricky for anyone with more than one interest, or people who want to work in more than one field. It can also make it difficult to keep work and social life seperate.
And I find this trend very odd.
Strangely I might not want my pre-teen fans who are largely engineering nuts (Hi guys!) to find my horror work if they look me up online.What you say in a discussion for adults might not be what you say in one for kids, or simply not said the same way - A frank discussion of Incan sacrifical practices comes to mind. What I say to a client professionally has nothing to do with what the horror fans like, and I really would not want a horror fan looking me up through my work*. Also what I do out-of-hours is none of a clients' business as long as it would not adversely affect their reputation, which it does not.
The problem with using different names to seperate work and social - or even work and hobbies - is that Twitter and others now insist you have to give your real name and can only give one email address. More than one such service limits you to one account. This leaves people with multiple interests in a bind. Do you lie on your application or link all the content to one name and lose the different groups?
This to me is symptomatic of a greater issue: the increasing belief that I have encountered that people can only be good at one thing. I find this limiting and disappointing. One of the highest achievements for an individual used to be to be a polymath - someone who excelled and made notable contributions in multiple fields. Now it seems to be that once you've worked in one field, you are not supposed to have any interest in anything else and to me this sells people short. I'm old-fashioned. I think that everything can be interesting and narrowing yourself to finding enjoyment from one narrow activity is doing yourself a disservice.
After all, as they say, only boring people get bored.
Rant over, and on to ways to manage this:
Multiple accounts are the simplest. This can be tricky to manage, but if you have access to multiple web browsers, each can be configured differently. (e.g. I use Firefox for article-writing, Opera for games interests etc.) with different bookmarks etc.
Some services can handle multiple accounts, so with those you are OK. With others it might be harder, and leave you looking at different services that do the same thing. You can also change what it says under name once the account is set up e.g. my Twitter account.
How would you manage it?
For example, as one of my interests I write. I write articles, poetry, stories, games, books and now novels. And this apparently causes a problem. I have been told outright that I should stop writing the award-winning steam train articles simply because I don't work in the field, that a thriller publisher won't pick me up because my name is linked with horror, etc. The obvious solution to this would be ID differentiation: writing under different names on different subjects.
Unfortunately the web now appears to be trying to make everything about one person be under one ID. The trend is to link everything up. This can make life tricky for anyone with more than one interest, or people who want to work in more than one field. It can also make it difficult to keep work and social life seperate.
And I find this trend very odd.
Strangely I might not want my pre-teen fans who are largely engineering nuts (Hi guys!) to find my horror work if they look me up online.What you say in a discussion for adults might not be what you say in one for kids, or simply not said the same way - A frank discussion of Incan sacrifical practices comes to mind. What I say to a client professionally has nothing to do with what the horror fans like, and I really would not want a horror fan looking me up through my work*. Also what I do out-of-hours is none of a clients' business as long as it would not adversely affect their reputation, which it does not.
The problem with using different names to seperate work and social - or even work and hobbies - is that Twitter and others now insist you have to give your real name and can only give one email address. More than one such service limits you to one account. This leaves people with multiple interests in a bind. Do you lie on your application or link all the content to one name and lose the different groups?
This to me is symptomatic of a greater issue: the increasing belief that I have encountered that people can only be good at one thing. I find this limiting and disappointing. One of the highest achievements for an individual used to be to be a polymath - someone who excelled and made notable contributions in multiple fields. Now it seems to be that once you've worked in one field, you are not supposed to have any interest in anything else and to me this sells people short. I'm old-fashioned. I think that everything can be interesting and narrowing yourself to finding enjoyment from one narrow activity is doing yourself a disservice.
After all, as they say, only boring people get bored.
Rant over, and on to ways to manage this:
Multiple accounts are the simplest. This can be tricky to manage, but if you have access to multiple web browsers, each can be configured differently. (e.g. I use Firefox for article-writing, Opera for games interests etc.) with different bookmarks etc.
Some services can handle multiple accounts, so with those you are OK. With others it might be harder, and leave you looking at different services that do the same thing. You can also change what it says under name once the account is set up e.g. my Twitter account.
How would you manage it?
Wednesday, 6 January 2010
A rant about privacy
I like my web ID. I've been using it for twenty years or so. I use it so I don't have to use my name online.
It's not linked to my real name or career because frankly, what I do in my day job (consulting) is not something I want to do online after hours. I've got other interests.
So why on earth have places like Yahoo started displaying real names on profiles? I've wiped my Yahoo profile after getting work requests when I wrote about steam trains, for heaven's sake! Then you have to deal with some idiot saying that your answer must be wrong because of your nationality/ background/ job/ whatever... rather than checking the facts. When my career is linked I also get people I don't know, with no interest in what we were discussing, asking me to help them get jobs, provide confidential contact info for companies and so on.
Here's a hint. If I wanted to talk work I'd do it on the work boards. If I want to talk about my hobbies and interests, and the things I'd like to do I'll be on a private board and not using my work-name. Getting hit up to do work for free or hand out contacts does not impress me.
Remove anonymity and I'll leave your site because I keep my personal life strictly seperate from my professional one.
The worst offenders so far are everyclick and yahoo, but it seems to be a trend. I don't know what's behind it but I am really, really, sick of it.
That's my personal complaint over with.
And my professional view? With the increasing concerns over ID theft, I find it very, very, odd that companies holding personal IDs seem to be going out of their way to make it easier for the thieves and not harder.
I would not be writing if I had not just run into this professionally. One notable case (details fudged) was a recent client who found her address, date of birth and full name displayed on the homepage an ISP had thoughtfully created for her, gathering information from the various online services she used. Of course, as they had created it automatically they had not bothered to put the privacy settings up and made it open for public view. She had never agreed to this and they did not tell her they had created it until after the fact.
This kind of irresponsibility bugs me. Once the information is out there there is no way to get it back, and she's the one who had to call me in to track it down and help her block her credit report and other details because of their carelessness. Protect yourself online: If you are using such a service, do check what they have made available to general viewers and also what is on any homepages for online services like yahoo, facebook etc. You may be surprised.
And that's the last crossover between professional and personal you should see on this blog.
It's not linked to my real name or career because frankly, what I do in my day job (consulting) is not something I want to do online after hours. I've got other interests.
So why on earth have places like Yahoo started displaying real names on profiles? I've wiped my Yahoo profile after getting work requests when I wrote about steam trains, for heaven's sake! Then you have to deal with some idiot saying that your answer must be wrong because of your nationality/ background/ job/ whatever... rather than checking the facts. When my career is linked I also get people I don't know, with no interest in what we were discussing, asking me to help them get jobs, provide confidential contact info for companies and so on.
Here's a hint. If I wanted to talk work I'd do it on the work boards. If I want to talk about my hobbies and interests, and the things I'd like to do I'll be on a private board and not using my work-name. Getting hit up to do work for free or hand out contacts does not impress me.
Remove anonymity and I'll leave your site because I keep my personal life strictly seperate from my professional one.
The worst offenders so far are everyclick and yahoo, but it seems to be a trend. I don't know what's behind it but I am really, really, sick of it.
That's my personal complaint over with.
And my professional view? With the increasing concerns over ID theft, I find it very, very, odd that companies holding personal IDs seem to be going out of their way to make it easier for the thieves and not harder.
I would not be writing if I had not just run into this professionally. One notable case (details fudged) was a recent client who found her address, date of birth and full name displayed on the homepage an ISP had thoughtfully created for her, gathering information from the various online services she used. Of course, as they had created it automatically they had not bothered to put the privacy settings up and made it open for public view. She had never agreed to this and they did not tell her they had created it until after the fact.
This kind of irresponsibility bugs me. Once the information is out there there is no way to get it back, and she's the one who had to call me in to track it down and help her block her credit report and other details because of their carelessness. Protect yourself online: If you are using such a service, do check what they have made available to general viewers and also what is on any homepages for online services like yahoo, facebook etc. You may be surprised.
And that's the last crossover between professional and personal you should see on this blog.
For the record:
- I consult in IT, which I am good at.
- Tirial writes about planes, trains, and interesting stuff, which I enjoy.
Tuesday, 5 January 2010
A busy start to the year
Well, my e-commerce game business which I had been letting quietly atrophy (it was by now largely a shell to collect royalties and manage licences) appears to be taking off at the start of the year. I'm not one to waste an opportunity, so we're setting up a few new stock suppliers and will have to see how it does.
On the family front I have had some bad news, so updates may be erratic for now.
Aims for this year:
Finish "Into Flight", my Nano-novel, after getting complaints from the beta-reader that I could not just drop it.
Finish editing the novel I was working on before, for publication.
Get some more articles and lenses written for charity.
Win the lottery (well, why not add something I won't manage in four weeks?)
And I am looking for a new aviation charity to support/promote this year so if you are interested or have one I should consider, please let me know.
And according the Unicreatures test I count as Flarius. Why not try it yourself?
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