Friends - casual or otherwise

[french frank]

It's much like the rest of the internet - using emails, cookies, scams, hackers … the safest bet is not to use the internet at all. But some people do seem to be a bit naive, or not internet savvy. They'll chat away, giving out information about themselves and others, not using privacy settings when they're available, 'signing in with Facebook' and handing over their entire friend list for goodness knows what reason to goodness who. Then there's credit card fraud, banking malpractice, and so on. Keep your money in a tin box under a floor board, say I.

[vinteuil]

Keep your money in a tin box under a floor board, say I.

... and in so doing, over time, will lose a lot of money - allowing for inflation, and missing out on interest / compound interest, - and will probably lose still more if not taking the possibility of investments incurring understood risks.

.

[french frank]

... and in so doing, over time, will lose a lot of money - allowing for inflation, and missing out on interest / compound interest, - and will probably lose still more if not taking the possibility of investments incurring understood risks.

.

You just have to spend less, then. Eat less. Tip: make sure you have one very warm coat

Just pointing out that Facebook isn't the only place where information can be collected and used for uses you may not want. There are plenty of totally unnecessary ways where people hand out information about themselves.

[Padraig]

There are plenty of totally unnecessary ways where people hand out information about themselves.

You are right f f. But R3 Forum is a pleasant place for handing out unnecessary information of various kinds.

[Richard Barrett]

That's the gig though
I'm often amazed that folks don't realise this
There is plenty of information that one can only access by joining things, nothing new about that

I have a friend who refuses to use Google completely as a point of stubborn principle.
BUT he is quite happy for others to do so in order for him to navigate or look at Youtube etc
to be honest it's a total pain in the arse as he really DOES use it but through others.....

In my first coment I said

"No sh*t Sherlock
FB has ALWAYS been a data mining organisation
that's the gig"

Do you avoid other organisations that indulge in malpractice ?
If so do you ever get on a train and so on ?

Indeed. FB is in the end a service like any other: you get something, you pay for it. You can then decide whether what you get is worth what you pay for it. For me it is. Most corporations offering services indulge in dodgy practices of one sort or another - one might (and I do!) regard having the maximisation of profit as by far the number one priority a dodgy practice in itself.

I'm in touch with school friends I hadn't seen for decades. I comment on and take part in discussions on highly diverse subjects (including some not allowed here!). I let people know about events, recordings, broadcasts, publications and so on, and I see what other people in my line of work and other lines of work are doing. I saw an offer for scholarships for PhDs at Leeds University which led me to apply (successfully) for one, so that's a total of thirty grand (plus free tuition) I wouldn't have had if I wasn't on Facebook.

[MrGongGong]

Indeed. FB is in the end a service like any other: you get something, you pay for it. You can then decide whether what you get is worth what you pay for it. For me it is. Most corporations offering services indulge in dodgy practices of one sort or another - one might (and I do!) regard having the maximisation of profit as by far the number one priority a dodgy practice in itself.

I'm in touch with school friends I hadn't seen for decades. I comment on and take part in discussions on highly diverse subjects (including some not allowed here!). I let people know about events, recordings, broadcasts, publications and so on, and I see what other people in my line of work and other lines of work are doing. I saw an offer for scholarships for PhDs at Leeds University which led me to apply (successfully) for one, so that's a total of thirty grand (plus free tuition) I wouldn't have had if I wasn't on Facebook.

[french frank]

You are right f f. But R3 Forum is a pleasant place for handing out unnecessary information of various kinds.

But if you (one) gratuitously hand(s) out the information, there's no case to complain if you (one) don't (doesn't) like the use it's subsequently put to. The warnings are there and you take the risk or not depending whether you think it's worth taking. Quite rightly, you've never divulged your address to me so I have to concoct a picture in an email in order to exchange Christmas cards. Which I can't do now because your email address seems not to have been updated <hint> :-P

[Conchis]

Post-Frauderendum, I've made a lot of new FB friends whom I'll probably never meet but who share many of my interests. They have enlivens my wall greatly and we've discussed things that I wouldn't have had a hope of discussing with the dull dogs I know irl.

[Dave2002]

Surely it's one thing to avoid organisations that indulge in malpractice as much as possible, unless one is into that sort of thing, or if avoiding them is impossible. All the shops I go to still use far too much plastic in packaging, but I'd be spending twice as much time and dosh using only small outlets not part of the bigger chains that supposedly make up an important part of employment in the "service sector" once promulgated by Thatcher and most politicians since as the nation's salvation. Otherwise one starts to sound rather sanctimonious, which I would not have thought of Dave2002, based on what I have read of his posts on here!

I'm trying to work out whether I'm sanctimonious or not. Just checked the meaning - don't think so!

I once didn't buy petrol for a period of several years - maybe five - from a well known brand, because their involvement in African politics - or at least tacit support (nah - more than that) for it. In the end I gave up. I have friends who don't use amazon because they say that company has a tax advantage which it shouldn't have. Maybe that's the case, but I doubt whether their boycotting of firms like that is going to make very much difference.

Sometimes I do deliberately not buy from some shops - or don't buy specific products, but mostly I just buy things I think would be useful/desirable and at a "reasonable" price.

I don't approve of people making lots of journeys by air - but then I don't approve of myself, because I have made more than a dozen in the last year, probably clocking up at least 1000 miles each month. That's rather more than most people, but considerably less than some. To some extent this offsets journeys which I might otherwise have made by car, but last time I checked a mile travelled by air corresponded to two or three miles by car.

I do try (and fail) to be environmentally responsible. I got the plastic bag thing wrong, as I didn't think charging for them would make much diferrence, and would hardly save the planet. It's not going to save the planet, but I'll concede that there has been social change due to the charges (which I don't normally pay, as we have a supply of bags of various types) which has reduced the rate at which damage due to plastic occurs quite significantly.

Some systems as they develop, almost inevitably give rise to unintended consequences. One example is the Unix OS, which has a fairly rudimentary protection system. At the time there were competitor mainframe systems which had complex layered protections, but they were expensive and relatively unwieldy. The Unix developers included people such as Brian Kernighan, Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson who didn't think that there was a great need for elaborate security, and initially they were right. The system wasn't really supposed to go global, but was for small teams, presumably of people who trusted each other. It worked fine for a while, until eventually something happened which made some of the people realise that it only takes one or two bad guys to screw things up.

Because computers can do things so fast that's great if they're doing things which are good and helpful, but the bad guys have realised that they can also use the speed to screw things up and/or extort money, or cause other problems.

[Dave2002]

It's much like the rest of the internet - using emails, cookies, scams, hackers … the safest bet is not to use the internet at all. But some people do seem to be a bit naive, or not internet savvy. They'll chat away, giving out information about themselves and others, not using privacy settings when they're available, 'signing in with Facebook' and handing over their entire friend list for goodness knows what reason to goodness who. Then there's credit card fraud, banking malpractice, and so on. Keep your money in a tin box under a floor board, say I.

I was once on a London bus and I heard a guy asking someone to order a ticket over a phone to someone else who i assumed was going to do the booking - might have been an airline ticket. He shouted out all his credit card details, plus just about everything else one would need to order stuff off his account!

On another occasion I was on a train and I heard two girls talking about ordering stuff. Similar to the man on the bus, but a slight twist at the end, when one of them queried the other about the accounts and giving the information out ..."Oh - it's OK - it's my mum's card"......

It would have been easy to remember the numbers and write them down if I'd felt so inclined.

[french frank]

I was once on a London bus and I heard a guy asking someone to order a ticket over a phone to someone else who i assumed was going to do the booking - might have been an airline ticket. He shouted out all his credit card details, plus just about everything else one would need to order stuff off his account!

On another occasion I was on a train and I heard two girls talking about ordering stuff. Similar to the man on the bus, but a slight twist at the end, when one of them queried the other about the accounts and giving the information out ..."Oh - it's OK - it's my mum's card"......

It would have been easy to remember the numbers and write them down if I'd felt so inclined.

Serve them right if they're defrauded (and 'mum' for trusting her silly daughter). Personally, I find it hard enough to remember three PINs for 2 credit cards and a debit card. No idea of the rest of the details.

That said, Mark emailed me last night to say my main email address had been 'compromised'; not sure how, other than that the first half of it was correct, the bit after @ had been changed, so it only looked as if it was mine.

[Dave2002]

Serve them right if they're defrauded (and 'mum' for trusting her silly daughter).

It seemed quite plausible that mum didn’t even know her card was being misused - so trust is an interesting word in this context.

[french frank]

It seemed quite plausible that mum didn’t even know her card was being misused - so trust is an interesting word in this context.

Careless rather than trusting, then . For daughter, substitute deeply criminal , rather than silly

[Bryn]

Serve them right if they're defrauded (and 'mum' for trusting her silly daughter). Personally, I find it hard enough to remember three PINs for 2 credit cards and a debit card. No idea of the rest of the details.

That said, Mark emailed me last night to say my main email address had been 'compromised'; not sure how, other than that the first half of it was correct, the bit after @ had been changed, so it only looked as if it was mine.

Having had several emails, supposedly from contacts but with the wrong suffix, recently, I would also like to know more about this form of scam, too.

[french frank]

Having had several emails, supposedly from contacts but with the wrong suffix, recently, I would also like to know more about this form of scam, too.

Meant to write 'so it only looks as if it was my name' - though it actually wasn't even that - it was a pewdonym . First thing to do is change your password. I checked and the a/c had been 'pwned' but my computer is showing no other viruses, trojans, malware &c.

More info from Computing Which? https://computing.which.co.uk/hc/en-...-ve-been-pwned. I'll ask Mark this evening for any other details, like whether the entire addressed had been forged (in which case the address used was only visible if you hovered over it or clicked Reply).