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Comment by dickinson99 | Hacker News Reader

Close the tab, app, etc. Walk away from the computer.

Given than HN is a discussion board frequented by people who generally see the Internet as a fundamental aspect of “real life”, it seems ironic to argue that people should solve their social media problems by just logging off. It’s feels akin to telling someone who is forced to live with throttled capped Internet bandwidth to “go outside and read a book” or “just go to the movie theater”.

Presumably, the people who are most unhappy about Instagram harassment are people who use the social network to make connections and friendships that they can’t make otherwise — there is no line between their social network relationships and “real life” relationships, especially as the former so often becomes the latter. That Instagram is so massively popular, and even an engine for economic activity, is a sign that it’s not something that people can simply log off from. Imagine telling a developer to just “log off” and get a “real” job if Microsoft were to kill every Github repo that didn’t agree to abide by new draconian licensing and terms of service.

Bit hard to do when they're calling your work, visiting your house, swatting you, etc.

Posting identifiable information on the internet should never be done. Perhaps middle schools and high schools need to teach kids about the dangers of the internet.

You're grossly underestimating how dedicated and adept some people are at finding PII given even minute details [1]. The only real way to avoid sharing PII is to stay off the internet entirely.

And even then, pandora's box has already been opened. Your PII is available even if you haven't explicitly chosen to share it [2].

1: https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/4chan-shia-labeouf-secret-l...

2: Equifax.

This implicitly claims that your identity isn't even loosely coupled to "izzydata". A quick google shows twitch, youtube, twitter, etc. If these are in fact, you, then it is highly likely you could be identified. If you can be identified, you can be harassed.

Don't normalize harassment.

Sure, you could spam me on the internet, but this person was talking about offline harassment.

Just some kindly intended advice, but you should consider deleting this comment man.

This is just the sort of comment that some might view as an invitation, or as you challenging them. And on a place like HN, you probably have quite a few people and groups around who would be well qualified to "make a point" so to speak.

Anything is possible. I can even see some potential ways to do it. You still shouldn't post things such as your home address or phone number on the internet though.

It's one thing to be aware of the potential risks, but it is another for a 13 year old on Instagram not even realizing there are consequences.

People don't. Real name is often enough, with a bit of disambiguation from location. And people can do amazing things from the background of photos.

99.9999% of those harassers die with no feedback. Some of the victims are really stupid.

I bet it woulsnt be that hard to find out who you are. You underestimate how good people are at this .

This is literally the definition of victim blaming.

How else would you avoid people identifying who you are online, other than not posting any identifiable information? If you post your home address and phone number on Facebook and people start prank calling you in the middle of the night and sending pizzas to your house, is Facebook really to blame here?

You don'thave the option. They force you to use real names, and sometimes force you to use your full name.

"Facebook demanded driving licence, then posted data from it": https://www.reddit.com/r/LegalAdviceUK/comments/9n8ulu/faceb...

> A couple of days ago Facebook suspended my account as apparently someone had reported me as having a fake name on there. It advised I needed to upload a copy of my ID to get the account unlocked. I sent them a copy of my driving licence to prove my name was real. Today Facebook has unlocked my account but has added both my middle names onto my facebook account so it displays my full name to everyone. If I try to change it back on my profile page it says that I need to wait at least 60 days before updating my name again.

> I do not want my middle names on Facebook, I consider that a security risk as it is one of the questions my bank uses for security. I did not give Facebook permission to copy that data from my licence and certainly not permission to then display it to others.

> Do I have any recourse or way of getting them to change the name back? I can't see any way to contact a human as all support tickets have just been closed.

It is extremely difficult to avoid leaking information somewhere, as others have pointed out. Eventually there's a trail.

People often (or at least used to) share their current location on Twitter without having any idea they were doing it. Venmo payments default to public, again something that people often don't know.

And often it's not you who leaks the information but someone you know. Good luck controlling the social media presence of everyone in your family and circle of friends.

Okay, so again how is the site to blame if your family or friends leak your info. I agree that these sites should be defaulting most options to non public until people explicitly choose for something to be public - but beyond that, the only thing I can see working is heavily discouraging the bad behavior, and we likely need the legal system for that. All a social media company can do is ban someone for bad behavior, not fine them or throw them in jail.

Facebook "requires" real names, so I'd say, yes, they are at least partly to blame.

There was no mention of victims or blaming anything.

There's no way to really stop a determined attacker from identifying you online, or even doxing you online if they want. Even seemingly insignificant details are enough for a lot of hackers. (And in the instagram case, wisely or unwisely, people are posting actual photos of themselves and their friends. So an attacker has a whole lot more than "insignificant details".)

Precisely. It's not as if you are Buzz Aldrin, trying to walk away again and again and continuing to be harassed by a moon landing conspiracy theorist. The 1's and 0's are easily silenced.

No.

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