I'm an amateur tech grrl... built my own rig for games and art... savvy with software and mid level programming... but I am also a bit paranoid for exactly the reason described here... SO... "Wednesday" has an e-life separate from my male self.
I'm an amateur tech grrl... built my own rig for games and art... savvy with software and mid level programming... but I am also a bit paranoid for exactly the reason described here... SO... "Wednesday" has an e-life separate from my male self.
Last edited by Felicia Dee; 04-27-2014 at 03:30 PM.
I use a camera to take pictures and a telephone to make phone calls. Old fashioned? Perhaps but I don't really need a combination device and a dedicated camera seems to take better pictures.
I also watch what I put on the Internet and Krisi doesn't go there except for this forum. All Krisi's photos are on a portable storage device not linked to the Internet.
Perhaps someone could start a sticky thread with how to deal with all of this technology. I love the ease of having all MAC stuff that communicates back and forth, but my brother in law asked me if he could have my Icloud info so he could share photos? I didn't even really know what that was (a virtual harddrive that you can give access to all your friends to!) He has already (unknowingly) seen an image of "alter"me on photoshop when I opened the program for him one day and it opened to the last thing I was working on! I don't want to upload my stuff to Icloud or facebook or anything else for that matter... So how about it? Get our Tech wizz folks their own How To... Sticky thread?
I don't think there should be any surprise that corporations will use every means at their disposal to increase their profits, including making your whole life public; after all, lots of people simply love to share every damn thing in their life with the world. Consider facebook and twitter, instagram, etc., and how many people really believe that the world needs and enjoys everything about them! Then consider that every bit of data is collected to marketing firms who sell your information. Just assume the worst possible outcome of each of your actions, and you will remain mostly private, and safe. I googled myself after reading this thread, and found.....nothing.
Some causes of crossdressing you've probably never even considered: My TG biography at:http://www.crossdressers.com/forums/...=1#post1490560
There's an addendum at post # 82 on that thread, too. It's about a ten minute read.
Why don't we understand our desire to dress, behave and feel like a girl? Because from childhood, boys are told that the worst possible thing we can be, is a sissy. This feeling is so ingrained into our psyche, that we will suppress any thoughts that connect us to being or wanting to be feminine, even to the point of creating separate personalities to assign those female feelings into.
Not sure you need to be a tech wizz. It's quite simple - once something moves beyond the confines of your head you risk it being shared. Don't want to be found out? Keep it to yourself, completely and utterly.Originally Posted by Secret Drawer
For many years I was a "tech wizz" and the number of times I saw compromising data on clients computers I repaired was unreal. I'm talking everything from money being sent offshore surreptitiously to images of bizarre porn. That was back in the days when BBS were all the rage and the world wide web was barely getting going. It's only going to get worse, as the time between then and now have already proven.
What's worrying (for me) is when I show younger friends what is possible to find out from their online activities, rather than being met with outrage or horror, they tend to shrug their shoulders and accept the loss of privacy as acceptable and part of life. Sad...
Aeslyn,
I totally see where you are coming from.
I use Firefox and this has some intrusive software that I dislike also.
Any phone I use has to be a dumb fone.
I have plenty of cameras and computers even when traveling to look after my affairs.
LinkedIn and Facebook?
No thank you.
Work on your elegance,
and beauty will follow.
I also tend to keep things quite separate. Aeslyn would be my main user on this pc if I didn't have to use it for work. But since I do I use linux on a vm for everthing Aeslyn and she has her our emails, including gmail, and other various accounts. But different phone? No, I have two already and that is more than I can handle lol.Good point Aeslyn - I'm sure you weren't the first and won't be the last, but hope that nothing damaging comes of the automated revelation...
For me, this is a strong case for partitioning: Katey has her own email and Google account - that's it. No FB, Twitter, yibber-yabber, whatever - and there are minimal links between this virtual world and reality... worked in technology all my life but still don't believe that all progress is good progress..
Perhaps the first big lawsuit where someone (perhaps you...?) takes Google to the cleaners over some inadvertent disclosure will make the default setting more private...
I do worry about my photos sometimes...
Katey x
Lol, my laugh for the morning.
Yeah, I got them deleted from my google account, but there were there for about a day before I knew and once something is on the internet it is out in cyberspace and beyond your control. Maybe the images will never be seen again, and maybe they will. I use google+ for work though, it's required with something we are working on, and my account is linked to the development so... hopefully no one was looking on the weekend. Luckily, though, my boss called me last night and he said nothing about it. He is the person I would be most worried about.
As far as the advertising people have mentioned I can only say, oh I am missing out it seems. Lingerie ads? I'd love em. But I use firefox and chrome and in both of them I have adblock plus installed so I never get to see ads really.
Krisi, you are not alone. We don't even have a cell phone. I watched a segment on 20-20 last night. The invasion of privacy is rampant. I have one hotmail account (personal) and two gmail (one for crap and one for this forum) accounts. I do not have a debit card.
One of the things one should be aware of when posting pictures on the Internet is the ability for a person to track you down. If you do not turn off your GPS feature on the cell phone, the GPS coordinates will be imprinted on the picture. I've watched a segment showing how easy it was for a person to do that. It is real easy for a tech savvy child predator to track down your child.
Yours is a good example of how current technology can cause many problems. Recently, there have been many articles re: how Google and many other companies are capturing and using peoples information in ways that were never imagined. Usually, a person only learns about this after unexpected things have happened.
A good rule of thumb is that once you press "send" your data is in the internet world, maybe forever.
Hugs, Carole
MsVal's other brain is a moderately paranoid, tech savvy, IT manager. He partitioned, encrypted, firewalled, and obscured nearly everything with security layered four-deep. And what happened? He got so frustrated having to jump through hoops of his own making that he rolled back nearly all of it. And what happened then? -nothing-
He did, however retain his physical security. That is, there is no connection between the camera and the Internet based file storage site. The site has no connection with any social media sites, and his social media sites have no connection with each other.
His digital photos are stored on a flash drive labeled "Warning: Sample viruses for penetration testing."
Best wishes
MsVal
I was just looking into this. Google claims that the photos uploaded from your camera-phone will not be visible to others through Google+:
>> Auto Backup...automatically backs up photos and videos from your mobile device to Google+ (and they will be private unless you choose to share them). >>
Also, here's how to turn off Auto Backup:
>> Open the Google+ app > touch the menu icon/button > Settings > Auto Backup > Toggle On or Off >>
That reminds me of an incident many years ago (think WordPerfect & DOS days). I wanted to test the trustworthiness of a friend prior to asking him to hold data backups for me. I asked him to store a floppy disk containing what he thought were business letters. It also contained a simple virus which would slowly corrupt the screen display until rebooted, then repeating itself. It was just the following weekend when I got a phone call from him telling me his PC was faulty and asking me to help him fix it. Clearly he'd inserted the disk and opened the files. I removed the virus but never did tell him what caused it. He also never got entrusted with my data, though we did remain friends for many years afterwards. Human nature to be curious I guess...
I really should separate the two sides of life. I had to send an email to a work colleague from my home laptop, which carries four email accounts. My rebsweb email account was set as default and I was sure I had sent said email from that one, as an extremely cold feeling shot through my core. Luckily, I had sent it with my main 'male me' account.
Had it gone from my rebsweb account, I would have had great difficulty explaining this one away. Email, Twitter and Web address as attached.
Rebecca
Like most of you ladies here, I'm well aware of the risks associated with smartphones and the inter-connectedness of the Android/Google universe and Facebook in particular, and I go out of my way to cover my tracks. Fortunately, most of the tips, hints, and caveats posted here were known to me previously, and I had already implemented them. Still, one day I was caught by surprise when LinkedIn tried to connect my male self with "Leslie".
Needless to say, "Leslie" has never registered with LinkedIn, and doesn't have an account or a profile there. D*mned if I know how that happened, but somehow I suspect that Facebook had a hand in this.
It also bears repeating that whenever you take a picture with a smartphone, the built-in GPS functionality automatically registers the location where the picture was taken unless you specifically disable that particular feature.
Today, I discovered that my CD related Chrome browser bookmarks from my computer at home, had automatically been uploaded into my Chrome browser at work since I logged into Google+
On the more entertaining side, about 12-14 years ago, I visited my grandmother and I wanted to show some photos from a trip on my laptop. Started the laptop, and then a program to show the photos. The only problem was that the last photo I had shown before switching off the laptop was the photo that automatically loaded and popped up on full screen.
I had played around with Photo shop earlier that week, and produced a very realistic photo with my own face replacing a woman's face. So basically my grandmother saw a close up of my face, framed with long blond hair, on a slim neck, and I was wearing a yellow top with a pretty decent cleavage.
That was very embarrassing for a split second, but I quickly closed the lid, relied on that as an elderly her eyesight should be poor, and said that this was not the photo I wanted to show. After that, she never told me again that it was time for me to find someone and get married (she had said that a couple of time earlier). She probably assumed I was gay, which I'm not, but she never brought it up, or commented the photo, again. And her eyesight was probably better than I had hoped for.
Actually I just remembered that another embarrassing thing happened to me. I had my aunt and her husband over to my place, and I booted up my PC to show off Internet (in the mid 90's). I had forgot that I had place three ladies wearing fur coats as a background on my screen. How does a boy in his mid 20s explain that he has three hot ladies wearing fur coats as the default screen background? That's just plain weird, from their point of view. In reality, I always wished I was the one wearing any of their coats.
Last edited by Bima; 03-10-2014 at 07:27 PM. Reason: Added the last anectdote
Hmm, is this something that a friend really does to a friend? Give them a piece of media infected with a virus as a "trustworthyness test?" With friends like this......I wanted to test the trustworthiness of a friend prior to asking him to hold data backups for me. I asked him to store a floppy disk containing what he thought were business letters. It also contained a simple virus...
Eryn
"These girls have the most beautiful dresses. And so do I! How about that!" [Kaylee, in Firefly] [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
"What do you care what other people think?" [Arlene Feynman, to her husband Richard]
"She's taller than all the women in my family, combined!" [Howard, in The Big Bang Theory]
"Tall, tall girl. The woman could hunt geese with a rake!" [Mary Cooper, in The Big Bang Theory]
No, not so weird for a 20-something guy IF the hot ladies wearing those fur coats had nothing on underneath and were flashing the viewer....
Actually, Auntie and Uncle would likely have been more freaked out by this visual if they were staunch PETA supporters...
You may be right Leslie, but the ladies were fully dressed, with kind of style and elegance to it. That should have worried the aunt and uncle :-)
(Btw, they were not PETA supporters, but I have very mixed feelings about fur coats myself. On one hand, I think it looks kind of hot and sexy, and on the other hand I know it is morally doubtful to kill animals, especially just for the fur. I feel confused :-)
/Bima
Last edited by Bima; 03-10-2014 at 07:29 PM.
Sorta off topic:
CASE STUDY: Several years ago, after a firm had beefed up its computer security, they hired a company to do penetration testing. If the security company could breach the firm's security they would get a contract to close the breach. The security company merely programmed about four dozen flash drives with a self loading program that, when automatically run would send the security company the time, computer id, and user id. They scattered the flash drives around the employee parking lot and waited for the results to come in. The very next morning the chief of the security company showed up at the firm's IT director's office with a list of two dozen compromised systems.
They got the job.
Best wishes
MsVal
Friends get chosen very wisely but retained for a lifetime! :-)
The auto uploads, if im not mistaken are private view only until you share them, I take pics of my loads some times for a CYA thing with pre loaded trailers and loads that are stored outside but requires a full tarp, and they never show up unless I share but Idk if I have it set that way. Btw I love my galaxy s4.
We are, who we are no one can change that. Be strong and be who you feel you are inside.
Also remember when you delete pictures they sometimes go into a trash bin and are still on your mac/pc etc ...its no wonder a crossdressers mind is like a detectives ..always thinking.
Every time my phone asks me to sync something, I'm always like....NO! GO AWAY! I've got the galaxy S4 too and have all syncing turned off other than my email and contacts. I know all the ins and outs of the phone though because I work for Samsung specifically with their mobile division. I have bigger issues with Google mucking things up on my pc with G+. Invasive ba****ds!
The longer I walk down this road I call a journey, the more I realize that it's not about passing or not passing. It's about being true to myself and being able to look in the mirror and say to my reflection... "Perfect"
Even if you create differing identities if they're on the same machine "they" will know that as every device that connects to the internet has a unique identifier (MAC Address, it's this that gets the info from a search to appear on your machine etc). "They" can try to link the two accounts together because they're helpful like that.
Who dares wears Get in, get out without being noticed
On desktops and laptops, the unique identifer (MAC address) can be avoided if you install VirtualBox or something similar, where you run several guest operating systems, each one with a browser targeting a single social media account. When a VM has been powered down, you can even change the MAC address of its network interface, but some operating systems remember it and will dislike the change, unless you boot them of an ISO image of a Live DVD.
Last edited by freeindress; 03-13-2014 at 04:12 AM.
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