Facebook on Geeky Schmidt

Verified Accounts or “Don’t let your friends steal your name”

Sun, 22 May 2011 16:07:53 +0000

I have a great friend (who may not agree with that “great” part after this) who refused to have a facebook page. I can’t disagree with the idea of being the part of the few left in America without one, but it has become somewhat of a joke with us.

Friend: Why didn’t you tell me?!

Me: I did tell everyone, via Twitter and Facebook

A few nights ago while we were chatting via Jabber I decided to play a little joke and create him a Facebook page.

Geolocation and Force Protection

Sun, 20 Feb 2011 22:56:55 +0000

OMG THIS DUDE IS AT THINK COFFEE!

Sometimes we get a little too focused in on what the root of a vulnerability is. I find myself thinking this a good bit with the advent of geolocation tagging and “check-ins” as the security world runs around with hair on fire.

Rather than accept that our tools and users will be GPS connected and tracked, we take the extreme of labeling it all bad. By doing so we have removed what is a valuable tool to our folks. We can all agree that geolocation unfettered is a bad idea, but can’t we agree that geolocation in and of itself is not?

What happens when you use TOR and Facebook

Thu, 06 Jan 2011 17:40:43 +0000

Facebook for all the lack of privacy controls and bad press, does in fact keep an eye on users. A few times since I started connecting to their jabber chat service through Tor I have been greeted to the following screen. I enjoy seeing what all nodes exist for exiting the Tor network, but wonder about the correlation possible. All the same I thought it was interesting for geek fodder:

Left Facebook and “Why you should too”

Sun, 16 May 2010 05:40:30 +0000

The amount of banter on the topic is extensive, but there really are good reasons to leave Facebook. When I started dabbling in Social Networking back on the BBS days there was always a desire and reason for anonymity. It could have been for the illegal activities going on or for the fact people just didn’t want to over expose themselves. It was around the time AOL picked up some steam that sharing really became trendy. There were extensive pushes to kick AOL off the grid for the amount of anonymous data leaked from their pipes, but that was not enough to place controls on the system. As I joined sites like Friendster, Jaiku, etc. there were always controls in place for the amount of information I could share and what people could share about me. That layer of control allowed me to keep tabs on my personal identity and persona. I left MySpace and Hi5 since everyone told me “Facebook is way more secure,” but at the time I was unable to join due to no college affiliation. That changed and I joined…