It seems as if there are two groups of people out there: the netizens (people that are into the Internet and get what it’s about) and the straights (people who aren’t and don’t). Generally netizens are on the computer all the time and everyone else knows they are. They’re on Facebook, MySpace, or Pownce. They’re twittering or jaikuing. They’re tumbleloging. They’re AIMing or Windows Messaging. They’re all about status or presence:

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with that. There can be legit reasons for indicating status. Where I work, we have a product where everyone can see everyone else’s status:

Quite useful. The problem with the netizens though, is that their readers know everything. When they’re showering everyone knows about it. When they’re at work or at school everyone knows about it. When they’re on vacation everyone knows about it:

Now unless Mike made use of some sort of private registration for his domain, his home address is easily findable through a simple whois query (since ICANN requires you to use your address when registering). So now that big screen TV that Mike just blogged about may not be there when he returns from Italy.

So is this openness really a good thing? (Of course not! My TV is gone!)

Up until recent times, we have been fighting for online privacy, not online transparency. People have been using TOR to keep their packets’ source hidden. Now people are using del.icio.us and letting everyone know where they bank:

How much easier is social engineering now that all this information is made readily available?

About 10 years ago, I was in a band with a friend of mine. We had recently acquired a new drummer (good drummers were always hard to find) and a lady drummer no less. Since we had a new member, we put her picture up on our band’s website next to ours. That’s what you do when you’re in a band. Well, her father found out about this and told me (while red in the face) that I had to take her picture off. He was concerned that someone would see her on our website and be able to find her. While he was trying to be a good father, he was simply misinformed. There were no last names, no addresses, no contact info or way to find her at all. The site was hosted on my Purdue account at the time, so the site was even in a different time zone from his daughter. No one would have been able to find her, but the Internet was still new in that day and people were still frightened of it. Anyway, my point is that he didn’t want even her picture on the Internet. Now everyone on MySpace and Facebook is posting all that and more.

So the question is are the straights inherently more secure than the netizens?