The fields below are not mandatory but keep it clean.
And then there was the blog entry I read once where a woman posted something to the effect of: "It's our daughter's 5th birthday! We're having a party, here's our address!!!" I was not on this person's blog buddy list, and I was able to read this--she lived just a train ride away from me...Hello, Richard Allen Davis? Can you come over?
along similar lines, flickr's geotagging makes it easy for the bad guys to see what you own and where you live.
Yes, beware: assume someone is after you if you don't know better. With so many bad people in the World, someone, somewhere must be on YOU.
For the criminals-to-be, I won't be home tommorow from 13h until at least 15h. I will be leaving some tech-gear right on my desk.
Oh, America after September 2001, cheer up!
Well I'm one of the stupid ones, though my name isn't on my calendar anywhere. I only use first names. Someone asked why. I thought since most of my family lives out of town, I'd share it with my them and my extended family so they could see what was going on and where we'd be if they needed us (out of town, who will be in town, etc). I'm thinking getting a new cell phone might be a better bet now. 
Thanks.
This isn't exactly new. Many years ago I gave similar warnings to folks who were posting detailed vacation information in rec.scuba. By looking up their previous posts, very soon I knew their full name and again was able to use an online search to find their address. The amount of information people share about themselves online is quite amazing.
Oh my god, people really leave their homes? And with little reconnaissance you can figure out when they're gone? With fear mongering like this, you could be a star on your local television station. Congrats!
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Thanks
-RamaSubbu SK
http://ramasubbu.spaces.live.com
Now for something else. How many of you lock the door between your garage and your house?
How many of you leave your garage remote in the car along with the insurance papers or registration papers with your address?
How hard it is for someone to break into your car take those and rob your house while you are at work?
If a criminal wanted to kill me, or rob me, they would be able to. I make no secret of when I leave my front door to go to school, and obviously it's pretty consistent.
I don't always catch the mailman, so a courageous burglar could just look at my mail to get my full name.
This isn't news. The only interesting thing about this is that it's using the _intarweb_!
Is the private setting the default on Google? Is such a setting default anywhere? (Maybe myspace, if you're underage.) I wouldn't be surprised if all public information has been in the process of being collated by government.
Interesting article. Try searching on "password" if you're into hacking or "blind date" if you want to give someone the surprise of her/his life.
Sigh. I'm getting dead tired mentioning it over and over again but people are and will be the weakest link in security.
That's nothin'. Why dick around with Google Calendar when you can get all this and more off of the average blog?
People generally don't care about their privacy; they just like to bitch about it being compromised, after the fact. How else do you explain the last 6 years?
Oh give me a break. Finding out a persons name, when he/she is not at home and all that is equally easy or easier through traditional surveillance techniques than with online tools.
If someone with even moderate resources really wants to get you, they get you. That's the way it has always been, that's the way it'll always be.
I came here through Slashdot and I liked what I read, not just this post but many others on your website. You guys really have a nice collection of tips. Thanks a lot. Such practicals tips/reminders are necessary to stay on track.
09.04.06 9:44 is absolutely right, even if you don't like his spelling. There isn't anything to talk about in this article! Calendars are *not* public by default; you have to *choose* to give out this information.
So anyone considering Google Calendar, this is not a reason to avoid it.
Wow, yeah. I should practice what I preach... Is scary though...
The article can be summarized as: OMG, people can see what I'm up to using the interweb!1, technology is bad FUD!!1
Reality Check : If someone is going to rob you (or, for that matter stalk you) they are going to start by your house (or in the case of stalkers, by following you, IRL). That much is common sense, even by the standards of a criminal mind.
Potential burglars, even the more sophisticated ones, are not going to go looking on Google to see if you are in or not. They are going to sit in a van across the road, and wait till you go out and lock the door, then wait, and then break it and steal your stuff when they can see the coast is clear.
I can see that a stalker may find the information useful, but if someone has already decided to stalk you, they are going to be able to work it all out anyway (and of course, if you have a Stalker your screwed anyway, public diary or not). If your worried that merely by putting this information up online you are be ENCORAGING a stalkers to target you, then you have serious paranoia issues I am not even going to attempt to address.
Seriously, some people here need to get out more (and to try thinking things through once and a while, and be less reactionary and easily led).
I bet some of you are freaked out by the concept of "phone books", using which potential criminals can look up your home address and phone number by based on nothing more than your name. Scary stuff indeed.
It's people like Tyler and boklm that do things like this. "It can never happen to me" attitudes cause it to happen. So Tyler and boklm, go ahead and make your calendar public.
Not knowing the dangers of something and doing it is forgivable. Knowing the dangers and doing it anyway is stupidity.
So did you call her home number, when she's out, and leave a message to alert her to this? Or did you just notify the entire internet of when they should drop by her place without even considering helping her to lock down her calendar?
see here is the thing.. google calendar is set to private DEFAULT!!! UNLESSS... u chnge it urself.. and in that case.. how many ppl r genius enough to share their private calendar with everyone to see... im not talking abt avrage users talkingn abt the techy geeks ur trying to flash this article to...
heck... attention deficit comes to mind reading ur article on wht ur trying to achieve...
My calendars and real address are available to everyone. I don't care about privacy...i have nothing to hide!
About burglars, yes, this worries me...so i got myself a couple of really big dogs, and they bite!
cheers,
Paul
Tyler: that's a pretty big fallacy you're falling into there. A criminal who lives near you won't "stumble" across yours. He'll deliberately search for calendars of people who live near him by including relevant search terms.
So ask yourself: "What is the likelihood of no criminals smart enough to use this living near me?"
An annoying spelling abuse trend is to turn a verb into a noun by inappropriately concatenating words. For instance, "check out" becomes "checkout", "log in" becomes "login", and (as you wrote here) "hang out" becomes "hangout".
You do not go to the airport to "hangout". You go to the airport to "hang out".
Please take note for the future.
That's it, idiots. Keep reassuring yourselves that you're perfectly safe, that using technology you don't FULLY understand is OK, and that the bad guys are all ignorant crackheads with low IQ's. Yeah. Uh-huh. OK, back to sleep now, little technosheep. ROTFLMFAO!!
It's not really scary to me. The same is true in real life, you can spy people, and see when they're not home quite easily.
"For Christ's sake, if given a choice, choose the private setting."
One of the use of google cal and other online calendars is to share your calendar with other people, so you don't choose the private setting in that case.
It does not happen that often that someone use it to do bad things against you, so why stop ?
You don't need google calendar to kill someone.
Kinda silly really. Products like Google Calendar, MySpace, and etc may seem to make your life more public but theres a few things to consider:
1.Is anyone really going to look at my calendar?
2.Is this information available via non-techy means?
3.Do the benefits outweigh the risks?
Answers:
1. Probably not. Of the hundreds of thousands of users of calendar programs, what is the likelihood that a criminal who lives near you is going to stumble across yours? Slim at best.
2. Probably. You could accomplish most of this without any access to a computer at all. You yourself say how easy it is to just "follow Mason". Its just as easy to shadow anyone else. Their schedule can be easily narrowed down, in addition to whether they have a husband/wife or kids or roommates or live in a high security building or have a big nasty dog or have a security system... etc. Little of which can be obtained via their online calendar. (Unless they're writing things like "Security system will be down from 2am Sunday to 3pm Monday." Which... I actually wouldn't put past people)
3. Depends on the individual. It can be really convenient to allow your friends to have access to your online schedule.
Interesting article. I would be curious what made this woman decide to have her calendar be public (it's hard to do by accicident)
Also how did you find her info to begin with? What did you search for? How did you know you found a Google calendar entry?
Keith - that is a silly way to look at this. People are choosing to allow their information to be public, not Google. All anyone has to do it select a private setting (like this message said)
Yes this is a bit scary... I haven't bothered will Google's Calendar yet and I prolly won't now...
Thanks for sharing...
This is actuually kind of scary. I guess I never thought about the fact that a little data from entry could be cross referenced with data from another to identify a person.
Commenting by HaloScan
