A writer for Wired magazine offers $5000 to anyone who can find him after he purposely attempts to drop out of society for a month.
"The idea for the contest started with a series of questions, foremost
among them: How hard is it to vanish in the digital age? Long
fascinated by stories of faked deaths, sudden disappearances, and
cat-and-mouse games between investigators and fugitives, I signed on to
write a story for Wired about people who’ve tried to end
one life and start another. People fret about privacy, but what are the
consequences of giving it all up, I wondered. What can investigators
glean from all the digital fingerprints we leave behind? You can be
anybody you want online, sure, but can you reinvent yourself in real
life?"
As part of the contest, he allows his editor to dole out the same type of hints that a
private investigator would likely be able to uncover - recent credit
card purchases, online handles, etc.
The contest generates a great deal of interest from people across the web:
"When I flipped open my laptop and saw my private information spilling
onto the Web, however, I got my first taste of a soon-to-be-permanent
state of fitful anxiety. I’d signed up for it, of course. But actually
living the new, paranoid reality felt different. Absurd ideas suddenly
seemed plausible. They’d contacted my cat sitter; would they kidnap my
cat?"
In the end, he makes it almost to the end of the month but not quite:
"And what of our original questions? Had I shown that a person, given
enough resources and discipline, could vanish from one life and
reinvent himself in another? I thought I had, though only up to a
point. Obviously the smarts and dedication of the hunters had
overwhelmed my planning and endurance. Along the way they’d also proven
my privacy to be a modern fiction. It turns out that people — ordinary
people — really can gather an incredible dossier of facts about you.
But a month later, life was back to normal and no one was taking any
interest."
The story's a long read but worth it if you're interested in the idea of digital footprints, privacy and the ubiquity of technology in today's world.
(via Reddit)
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Friday, November 20
Friday Fun Link - How Hard Is It To Vanish In The Digital Age? (November 20, 2009)
by
Jason
on Fri 20 Nov 2009 11:27 PM CST
Friday, August 7
Friday Fun Link - World's Oldest Map Found, Dates To 14 000 Years Ago (Aug 7, 2009)
by
Jason
on Fri 07 Aug 2009 09:39 PM CST
I can't help but use my "Digital Footprints" tag on this story!
 "The landscape depicted corresponds exactly to the surrounding geography," she said. "Complete with herds of ibex marked on one of the mountains visible from the cave itself." (via Reddit) Wednesday, October 22
Our First Home Is For Sale
by
Jason
on Wed 22 Oct 2008 12:00 AM CST
So I'm watching the Calgary Flames game earlier tonight and that inspires me to do something I haven't done in a long time - look at the MLS listings for our old neighbourhood in Calgary.
I'll admit that when we first left Calgary in 2004, I did this search on a WAY too regular basis. We'd bought a unit in an under-valued condo complex (due to an ongoing lawsuit with the developer - long story!) with the thought that if the lawsuit was resolved within a year or two, we'd potentially stand to make a killing. That didn't happen and when we sold because I was offered a job back in Saskatchewan, we made a bit of money but not nearly the big score that I'd hoped for in the hot Calgary real estate market (we actually bought close to the top of the market plus a day's hesitation in making our offer meant we ended up in a bidding war with one other buyer. Try to explain to your parents back in Saskatchewan that you had to pay MORE than the list price for a place to live!) That's all changed and the Alberta oil and resources boom has hit in Saskatchewan. Our province has the hottest economy in the country and after initially being depressed when we moved home that we'd never have a chance to potentially have such a big real estate gain, our house has ended up doubling in value in three years. When you look at the price we paid in Calgary and what we got when we sold versus the same ratio in Regina, it's no contest - Regina's real estate market has kicked ass the last few years and we timed our buy here WAY better. Which is all a long way to say that when I looked at the condos in our old neighbourhood tonight, not only did I see a unit for sale in our old building but the exact unit that we used to own is currently listed! (Here's a pic from when we drove by it during a trip to Calgary earlier this summer.)  (Our unit was on the third floor, somewhere in the middle left of this picture. If I had a digital camera back then or was near a scanner, I'd be posting some of the wicked Calgary skyline view photos we took from our balcony!) I don't know if the lawsuit got settled or not but our old condo's definitely jumped in price since we owned it as well - although it's been four years since we sold as opposed to the brief two years we owned it. One other irony? It's the same salesperson selling it as we used and who sold it to us when we bought it. He and his wife specialize in inner-city condos but it's hilarious that, like clockwork every few years, this guy is the one who's really making a score on this particular condo! Wednesday, October 15
Facebook Weirdness
by
Jason
on Wed 15 Oct 2008 09:49 PM CST
See if you can follow this...
Shea's cousin posted a comment on a photo that someone he knows uploaded to Facebook. Shea was able to view this photo and the comments that had been made about it even though she is not Facebook friends with the person that originally posted the photo. (This is a glaring Facebook security weakness that I've seen before - someone you know posts a comment on a photo uploaded by someone you don't, it shows up in your News Feed and all of a sudden, you're clicking through some stranger's photos of their vacation to Aruba!) The photo was of two girls in the 80's drinking "pic-a-pop" and Shea's cousin's comment was "Whatever happened to pic-a-pop?" (which is why Shea clicked on the photo in the first place - pic-a-pop was a popular soft drink in the 1980's that's recently made a reappearance in local convenience stores and she wanted to see what they were talking about.) The original uploader of the photo responded to Shea's cousin's comment to say that you could still buy Pic-a-pop in Regina and by the way, whatever happened to the other girl, giving her name. This is where it gets really weird. The other girl's name was really familiar to Shea and after she got me to look at the photo, I was able to confirm that the other "missing" girl was one of my best friends in high school (and in fact, was even kind enough to be my "date" to the prom although it was a "just friends" thing as my lack of studliness in my younger days is a well-established fact on this blog. In fact, that last link is to a photo. Of me. Getting a computer cake. On my 21st birthday. Yikes! The girl in question is actually in the bottom right of the linked photo as well.) Even weirder is the fact that Shea has (different) cousins on her dad's side that are related to the girl in the photo on her dad's side. So, even though you may be hearing banjo music in your head, this is a fairly common occurence in Saskatchewan (someone actually did a study based on the "six degrees of separation" idea which found that everyone from Saskatchewan is connected to everyone else in Saskatchewan by only one degree of separation.) In summary: - Facebook isn't as secure as you think. - Saskatchewan is a *very* small province. - The girl I went to prom with had even higher hair when she was 13 then when she was 18.  Talk about your digital footprints! |
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