Found my picture and my conversations here on Google

I fell prey to a credit card scammer once. After the card company investigated they told me that Florida based businesses were using people on Nigerian work visas and they were taking CC numbers and selling them to others of their "circle." The unexpected charges were all for oddball everyday bills and stuff, like somebody was living off the stolen cards.

It stemmed from an online purchase where the web site was primitive and just collected the order info and printed it for store staff to process by hand. Today there isn't as much paper floating around.

But of course with so much more volume today and all stored digitally a breach snags a lot of credit cards and can be done from anywhere if a security hole is found.
 

oldsunbird said:
I'Ve been on the internet since it started and this is the first time this has happened to me. I don't care about the picture, it was just the idea that someone could lift my info so easily and the fear it could lead to something more costly.
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..sorry but you've been on the internet for decades and you're just now realising your info could be stolen easily ?...
 
Two decades ago I participated in a course on Linux over several evenings. Our teacher advised us not to display personal infos on the net. Following my intuition I typed his surname and last name into Google. There was an in-depth description of him and his family by himself. But not on his own website (he didn't have one) but on a discussion forum about computers. It was like "I'm ..., married since the year ..., we have ... children, ..." I didn't confront him with this.:ROFLMAO:
 

hollydolly said:
..sorry but you've been on the internet for decades and you're just now realising your info could be stolen easily ?...
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Of course not. I am careful about info on stores I order from and other places. It just never occurred to me that my postings could be lifted so easily from social sites. I have joined many, many groups ( usual and not so usual ) and had my own sites and felt safe because I didn't use my real name. As far as I'm concerned, the issue is over.
 
No need to be paranoid; this forum doesn't request your credit card or social security number. Even if you use your real name or personal pictures, you are still safe.

Scammers can easily gather more interesting information from platforms like Facebook or Instagram. By following a TikTok account, they can learn pretty much everything about a person.

Rest assured, scammers won't lurk here to analyze your posts and figure out which city you are from; they are not that foolish.
 
hollydolly said:
My picture is all over the internet... but if somebody wants to use it, and call themselves Holly Dolly...let them fill their boots... it's not going to affect me financially...

If I care about what happens to my photos, I wouldn't upload them to any forum... I don't care.. as long as my real name is not out there connected with it.. that's fine by me... and I've been doing this for well over 25 years now..
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What ?! You're not Ms Holly Dolly? I am shocked!

My photo gets around a lot too. Have you seen at the post office?
 
Kaila said:
I bought an HP laptop, about a year ago, that uses Edge for a browser, and I just now put your username (all lower case) into the search, just for your own info, Diva, so that I could let you know if anything came up. Lots of SF posts did and were listed.
As an interesting aside, I then put my own username in, and there were lots of sites listed regarding info on the name derivation, baby names, etc. I didn't look at all pages to see if it eventually would show SF posts.
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Thank you for the info Kaila. Oddly, when I searched Google outside of this forum's search box, the only thing that came up was links for this
Dynamite Diva: One-Eyed Wild Ride by Jasper Jubenvill
But when I searched using SF's search box, all the way down where it says find (me) on Google, that's when I saw stuff for me. That's no surprise, since Google is affiliated here. But I also saw that there are other Oneeyedivas besides the one linked above. I even saw something for the forum I was on for a little while when I joined SF.

As I've said in other threads, I post personal stuff here about myself and sometimes my family that I would never post on Facebook, where I use my real name. This is why I do what I can to avoid having my screen name associated with my real name.
 
Anonymity on the internet isn't really possible. With AI doing its things, matching pictures with names will become possible without a doubt. We need to remember that there is never just a picture on the net, the picture is embedded with meta-data, along with having other data attached to it. For example, it's trivial to find out the town/city someone lives in simply through your IP Address. Depending on the camera and the settings made, the precise location a picture was taken is embedded within the picture itself.

There are things you can do, such as have VPN's, make sure settings for pictures are kept to a minimum etc. But for the most part they're more annoying than anything else. (IMO).

We need to maintain good password management for ourselves, and not use our real names (no, I'm not Vaughan). I also maintain three email accounts, I use one to sign up to things because that process tends to end up with all the spam. My everyday account stays pretty clean.

Using a real picture? I've done it once here. I only changed because I like to change every now and then.

Anyway, I better go now, apparently some Saudi Prince has died and has left me £11m. I've got to go collect it.
 
Matrix said:
Please "Report" the posts/pictures you want to have removed, once they are taken down from this forum, Google will also remove them after a while.
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Is Thomas7k a member or not? His post in the forum seems to have disappeared. He sent me a post in my profile early this morning. I wasn't sure he was legitimate so I waited until this afternoon to reply. I saw that he had posted later to a forum with quite a few others replying. So I answered his post in my profile. But now his post here seems to have disappeared. I was quite concerned because he seemed in great distress, but he didn't answer any posts. Tonight I sent him some hotline numbers, just in case.
 
CallMeKate said:
No, you didn't give any information that would identify you, Mary... I just looked at your profile. You sound like a totally lovely person! The only thing to consider if you're still concerned about privacy here is perhaps using an avatar that isn't your actual photo. So glad you joined us here! @oldsunbird
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Thank you. I appreciate the time and attention you gave this. I'm feeling more relaxed about google now. I have found my name and site addresses there many times, but never my picture and all my posts and replies. I guess I'm someone who, when she wslks into a room, looks aroumd to see where all the exits are, just in case... :unsure:
 
Matrix said:
It's a Nigerian scammer.
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Oh, I seriously need to listen to my strong intuition more. I'd first asked his age group because something felt off. Then I asked why he "followed" me and others 20 minutes after joining. But then I saw everyone else was being nice/concerned, and I felt like a high school mean girl :rolleyes: so I edited and played nice. Thank you *so* much for being on top of these things, @Matrix !
 
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