Skip to content

Allen Lew's Thoughts

My answer to "life, the universe and everything"

Tag: opinion

Posted on April 11, 2006November 15, 2012

The “danger” of Online Surveys

So we’ve all done a few of those surveys and our friends do that too. But did you know those kinds of survey’s could lead to people *gasp* finding out our interests *gasp*, particularly *gasp* online predators *gasp*?

From a Dateline NBC article on Myspace:

Stafford: You don’t think you gave him any private information?
Amber: No. I don’t believe I did.
Stafford: But what did you find out about Amber?
Det. Dannahey: Her real name. Your birthday. And you have a 377– question survey in your page,
Amber: Oh! I forgot about that.
Det. Dannahey: … which if I really was a predator, that would be just the kind of information that could maybe years ago, take me months talking to you to get that kind of information.

*Dun Dun Dun* The survey exposed that girl to a predator. *Dun Dun Dun*

Alright all kidding aside, predators are serious business and teaching kids to protect themselves is important. But seriously, the way these kinds of shows make everything seem so dangerous (which I know has been going on for years so don’t tell me that) is crazy. And then take a look at this sample profile that lists all the common mistakes of Myspace users, all the fun features are considered dangerous.

About Allen

Allen Lew is a technologist who likes to write about all sorts of things. More about Allen

Pages

  • About Allen Lew
  • About the Site
  • Contact Me

Recent Posts

  • 2 Months of The FI Guys
  • Launch: Planet FI, from The FI Guys
  • Launch: The FI Guys website
  • My American English to British English Spreadsheet
  • 2018 New Years Resolution: Achieve the Pillars of Financial Independence

Archives

Categories

  • Asides
  • Books
  • Business
  • Conferences
  • Design
  • Featured
  • Finance
  • Food
  • General
  • Humor
  • Jobs
  • Movies
  • Music
  • Non-Profit
  • Opinion
  • Photos
  • Politics
  • Quotes
  • Reviews
  • Science
  • Scripts
  • Software
  • Sports
  • Startups
  • Stuff I Use
  • Superheroes
  • Technology
  • The Internet
  • Tips
  • Toys
  • Travel
  • TV
  • Video Games
  • Videos

Tags

  • 30 Days of Wisdom
  • ads
  • Advertising
  • Al Gore
  • Arrested Development
  • Batman
  • Blogging
  • celebrities
  • Civil War
  • Climate Change
  • Countries
  • Creative Commons
  • Dating Abuse
  • Domestic Violence
  • Drupal
  • Elijah Wood
  • Environment
  • Facebook
  • Family Guy
  • financial independence
  • Firefox
  • Games
  • Global Warming
  • Google
  • Los Angeles Urban League
  • Mac
  • Macworld
  • Movable Type
  • Napa
  • Napa Valley
  • nintendo
  • nptech
  • OpenID
  • Palm Apps
  • Relay for Life
  • school
  • Sergey Brin
  • Social Networking
  • summer 2006
  • Tweets
  • Twitter
  • Voicemail
  • Wikipedia
  • Wordcamp
  • Wordpress
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Proudly powered by WordPress