FOIA, the law and modern communications.

[Serious Paul]

This is a local case, in which an adult woman sent a sexual explicit "joke" text to several people, including an underage girl. Cases like these seem to be increasing of late- from the Erin Andrews story (Not the first of it's type obviously) to many others I've started to retract my online presence, as my concerns over privacy and security increase.

What sort of steps do you take to protect your privacy and security?

[Salvation122]

Neither of those articles have anything to do with privacy. In the first case, the woman was a goddamn idiot and shouldn't have sent porn to a thirteen year old. In the second, someone drilled a hole in the wall so they could film Erin Andrews.

The simple truth is that you shouldn't post identifying information online if you're worried about it getting stolen. If electronic information regarding you is stolen from a business, you can sue them. If you make a sex tape and do not insist on holding onto the sole copy (and watching as your fellow artiste hashes the source file for the DVD) you are a goddamn idiot.

Basically, any concern over online privacy boils down to "don't be a goddamn idiot."

[3278]

What sort of steps do you take to protect your privacy and security?

I used to take some pretty serious steps, right up to not letting anyone I knew online know who I was offline, and not letting anyone I knew offline know who I was online. That only worked for just so long, however, and now I'm left doing a lot of self-censorship online, in which I can't talk about anything I've done that's illegal, I can't piss people off too badly, and so on. In essence, I've been returned to the world of consequences, and while that's distressing, it seems only fair.

[Liniah]

I'm worried about this sort of thing on Facebook. I actually joined Facebook with my real name and information. I have colleagues, my little cousins, and student workers as my friends on there, so I am always nervous that someone is going to say something dumb on there. There's really nothing I can do aside from un-joining or un-friending people. I also get paranoid that the things you mark as 'private' or for a certain group only could accidentally be visible by all by mistake. That would also suck a lot.

In terms of securing my stuff...well, I use a different password for everything I have a password for. None of them are the same. (That's a lot of passwords to try to remember....)

We also keep this sort of thing in mind at work. There are certain things we're supposed to tell people over the phone instead of over email because with email there is proof that we said it.

[Serious Paul]

I've been meaning to say this before now, but I've been busy.

Neither of those articles have anything to do with privacy

Directly, no. Indirectly they're related.

[DV8]

I've had this discussion with a lot of different people, and I've come to the conclusion that in the age of ever-increasing information awareness, it's becoming quite scary what an enormous data-footprint people start to leave behind. All is fine and well, of course, as long as those in charge are of the same opinions as you are, so there's nothing to fear because you have nothing to hide. But things can change. Hong Kong before the change-over was a good example. It was entirely legal to join the daily demonstrations in front of the Chinese embassy and consulate to protest what China was doing in Tibet. Then China took over, and some very uncomfortable moves were made at what China considered the ringleaders of the protests. It's not unfathomable that at one point or another what type of media you consume today, or what kind of literature you consume, might be used against you at a later date. Especially when you look at the fields that Google is expanding into, like advertising and genome research (!?), it seems like they are trying to go for the completist's approach to information awareness. Luckily, we still have the option (though it's shrinking by the day) to keep our footprint to an absolute minimum, and since a lot of these oppressive methods and tactics rely on your media consumption to work, you could still dodge it all if you're careful.