Last week I was taking photos of Smeaton's Tower lit up with candles to mark it's 250th aniversary and a complete stranger came over to ask if I could share the pictures I took as their camera had failed.
As a generous sort, and because the friend I was with volunteered me to, I offered to upload then later to flickr and e-mail them a link. Grateful, this stranger then gave me their e-mail address without a second thought.
Later, when I was about to e-mail the link to then I was struck by a memory of the session on digital ID I attended at ALT-C which could have been subtitled 'stalking 101' and wondered just what an e-mail address alone might reveal about someone. The exercise in that session had been too simple as te one thing we knew about each other to start with was that we were all at alt-c, so I wondered just what would be possibly with litterally no additional info.
Scarily, with a simple google search I found their presence on a forum where they used a different nick name, which led to finding their Twitter stream, and from that I could see where they work, where they study, thier hobbies, who their friends are etc.
Now, this was just an academic exercise and I have no wish to know anything about this person in particular, but I suspect that they had no idea that by simply giving a stranger their e-mail address that they were effectively giving such 'personal' info away without a 2nd thought. This is something I've struggled with myself since starting with Twitter as affectively I'm saying "hello world, this is everything about me, please don't kill/rob/scam me!".
But did you realise just how much an e-mail alone can give someone about you?
-- Post From My iPhone
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