I was thinking the other about about the amount of things i share on my Twitter, and my Twitter feed is open to absolutely anyone.
Lately I’ve even been Geotagging my Tweets by default (this means that attached to each Tweet is a picture of a map with approximately where I am at the moment).
I was curious about how much a complete stranger could compile about me based solely on my Twitter feed, so i thought of putting it out there on a message board, just asking some individual who was very thorough (and bored enough to actually want to sift through my 2500 tweets). to compile a sort of report of everything they knew about who I am and what I do.
Firstly, i dont think this would be a problem because all the info is already out there, and someone who wanted to stalk me could do it already, but I just worry that inviting someone to do it would be the problem?
Thoughts?
(For those that don’t know, “Twitter” is a servicve where people can give a 140 character status update about what they are doing at the moment, something they are thinking about, or a cool link/picture/story they have found, and a “Tweet” is the name of the update message.)
I’m just really curious of the exact info that someone could find out about me based solely off already publicly available information.
It’d be interesting to see what someone with experience in gathering information and profiling people could tell me about myself based on my tweets.
I first thought of this idea when I realised that if i were to see a psychic and they knew my full name, they could research me on Twitter and tell me amazingly accurate things about myself.
ETA: Regarding the negative aspect, I just thought that perhaps requesting such a thing from a group of strangers could attract a certain kind of individual that you wouldn’t want to expose yourself to, knowing they’d probably never find it themselves.
Not a chance in Hell I would do such a thing, or recommend it.
But then, I’m endlessly amazed at the personal nature of many things people choose to share on Twitter, Facebook, et al in the first place. Folks seem to have no sense of their own privacy these days, let alone anyone else’s.
I am quite the opposite. I think that for a rational adult, who isn’t going to post anything incriminating, then imagining stalkers around every corner is nonsense, or perhaps for some it is a fantasy to make them feel important. Remember Jennicam? When the first person filmed their life it was a huge deal and she couldn’t maintain her privacy. Now there are hundreds of thousands of people filmiing snippets of their lives on YouTube. In a world where everyone’s information is available everywhere, being the recluse is a personal choice, but I don’t think it much matters.
As far as the OP, I don’t see a link to your Twitter feed and I am not going to read through them all anyway. I would assume that through Facebook, Twitter and Google you could learn a ton of superficial information. I lose people at the conclusion that because it is out there you are in dire risk of having someone compile it and stalk you, I find that generally unlikely.
There was an article in Wired sometime last year where one of the reporters set out to lead a “completely public” life. I think he did this in response to another article about a man who was on the “No Fly List” for no reason, who decided to publicly account for his actions and whereabouts at all times (via blogging and Twitter) to show the government he had nothing to hide.
So the reporter did the same thing, publishing his whereabouts on Twitter constantly. I can’t find the article but I remember that he came to the conclusion that it sort of sucked because he could never blow off his friends, he could never hide from his boss, and his wife was peeved because everyone in the world would know when she was home alone.
This sounds kind of like companies hiring “ethical hackers” to test their systems. But I really think you should start with someone you know. Maybe you can find someone else interested and pair up? My take is that you will find it hair-curling in fairly short order how closely someone could track you.
Add another vote for “Why the hell would you do that?”
I guess I’m just tragically unhip, but I really don’t get the whole twitter/facebook thing. I can think of no reason I’d care to tell the world the minutia of my life, nor can I think of any reason I’d care to know about someone else.
@Oak–home now, surfing the Dope. @FreeWorld–who gives a fuck, Oak?
Some of you are kind of taking this from a different angle.
I’m already tweeting about 10 times per da, i already geotag every tweet i make. I have several hundred followers yet i only follow a few people (i have an 11:1 follower to following ratio) so not only do a lot of people already see what I’m doing, but plenty of them have chosen to have that information served up to me.
So what i’m saying is, i’m already putting this information out there, anyone in the world could get it if they want, if anyone wanted to stalk me they already could, but what are your thoughts on inviting a stranger (probably from a different continent) to compile a profile on me?
Why do you need a stranger? Why not do it yourself?
And really, I agree with fruitbat, the idea that someone cares enough to compile a detailed report of the life of a stranger solely from tweets is ridiculous. At its worst it’s damn egotistical unless you’re some big name celebrity.
The people that I know who like to twitter post a lot of details about their life, but none post enough to make a stalking profile a reality. And if you’re only tweeting ten times a day, neither are you.
It’s not me thinking “oh im so interesting that someone would do it!” but that “Well, there’s gotta be someone nerdy enough out there that would do it because they’d enjoy doing it about ANYONE” You’re on the SDMB, you must know the scope of nerds in the world.
If you think my 10 posts a day (actually more, once i’ve looked at my stats) aren’t enough to actually stalk me (including the geotagging) then you don’t really know how someone could work.
Say I’m at @X’s house and tweet a picture of them, thet’s geotagged.
Say I say I’m meeting @Y, which i do every Monday, that’s geotagged their workplace.
my 5 closest friends, plus two of my brothers have had their twitter accounts named, and their pictures shown on my Twitter feed.
If you really think someone couldn’t track me (and here is the key phrase) IF THEY WANTED TO, then you are silly.
The Washington Post recently wrote about Foursquare, a social networking site that encourages this kind of tagging. And PvP recently ran a parody story arc.
I never said it was impossible. I said no one would care enough to do that (and if you think someone does, you sorely overestimate your appeal to stalkers).
You’ve also changed the rules a bit, now saying you post a lot more than I thought you did along with saying that you post a lot more detailed information than you said you did. You are twittering in a more specific way than most people do, but if you stop being so specific and start being more general (like most twitterers), this wouldn’t even be anything to worry over.
First, im not worried, just curious about what someone could actually find.
My only worry was with ASKING someone to do this for my own curiousity, and whether what would be a problem.
I don’t think that MY Twitter feed is anything special, but im certain that there’s someone o the net that would put together info based on ANYONE’s Twitter feed.
I also already said “about 10 tweets a day”, it’s not that much more, and the avverage has actually gone up in the past month or two (as it has done every month), I don’t know how many people you know that tweet at least 10 times a day, but with the people I follow, im kind of average.
Before you reply, let me clarify that I am not worried about what I am actually tweeting, but I was asking whether people thought it would be a problem inviting come geek to compile info about public tweets together.
I think you’d want to pay someone to do this. The results might make an interesting article, a lot of people use twitter and have similar concerns/idle thoughts.
I say that you’d want to pay someone to do this because the set of people that would be willing to do a thorough job for free might overlap with the set of people that post on 4chan. Just a thought.
The idea of using 4chan intrigues you? That could lead to a far more interesting article, provided you use yourself as bait. If you plan to set up some other poor schmuck I assume that you frequent 4chan and already know what happened with Boxxy.*