I’m a bit concerned because I recently received a curious email from z.i.n.c.h.com. Here is an excerpt:
I have not mentioned to anyone or even posted on any other internet forums that I entertain the idea of transferring schools. Only here have I posted such information…
OOohhh… data mining on cc???
college"confidential"?
Is College Week Live a Hobson’s company? Is *****.com?
Honestly, this is a great forum, and I hope there’s another explanation!
EDIT: Not sure about Hobson’s
Could the fact that you had to spell around that zxxxc name be an indication that the source of your problem is with the other companies?
Here’s the info on Collegeweeklive:
Corporate Headquarters
CollegeWeekLive
c/o PlatformQ, LLC
100 Crescent Road
Needham, MA 02494
Toll-free: 1-888-697-0050
Phone: 1-617-938-6000
Is this a Hobson’s affiliate?
xiggi: Why would that be the case?
I expect they may be fishing for info.
I don’t understand how this could happen. The email address associated with my CC account is not public, and I don’t use this username anywhere else. CollegeWeekLive would have to know the email address associated with “caltanner” to connect it back to the account I created with them long ago (and I never even used their services).
Do you use the facebook app?
No not a chance!
Fascinating. I have never gotten any emails related to my CC posts & would be creeped out if I found out there is data mining going on in CC, especially the parents cafe!
General warning, if you post it on the internet, anybody can read it and harvest that information. Moreover, if you read the “Terms of Use” agreement when you sign up, you’ll see that most of these bogs and social websites claim that they may use any information you post and that their terms or use are subject to change without notice. Bottom line, don’t put anything on any website that you wouldn’t want to tell a stranger on the street.
2 Examples from Facebook (one safe, one disturbing)
1 (Safe):
Intel recently released a Facebook application to advertise the power of their new i series processors. The app is called “Intel Museum of Me” (check it out by typing it into the search bar on facebook, its safe). It harvests all your pictures, your fiends pictures, and your status updates and puts them in one “museum” of you that you walk through in a short video. The terms of use explains that all the information gathered is deleted after the video is created, but it does open you eyes a little bit to see that everything you’ve ever posted on facebook can be immediately recalled at the click of a button.
2 (Disturbing):
Logged onto facebook using my Android phone, it took all of my friends information, and added then into my contacts, thus taking my list of contacts from around 100 to more than 500 people whom I hardly talk to. So, phone numbers, email addresses, birthdays etc of everyone I’ve added as a fiend on facebook was extracted and put into my phone just by logging in. Scary to think some people put that much info on facebook.
Anyway, use caution and be smart when using the internet.
^ I definitely agree with everything you said, but the issue here is that there is NO public connection between the account I use here on CC, and the account I created a year ago on CollegeWeekLive!
When people post public info on themselves, that’s their choice. What bothers me is the “data-mining” going underground between services, in privileged ways, which I don’t know about. This would be less of an issue if my email on CC had been public, but it isn’t.
Unless you’re on your banks website or your employers private website, all information you give on any website can be potentially made public. This includes any information that you used in creating your account.
For instance, if I click on your user name and navigate to “Contact Info,” I can send an email to the email address you used when creating the account. I can also see how active your account is on the website, any post you’ve ever made, even your birthday.
When it comes to the internet, nothing is private.
Well, you can’t actually see my email address, and that would be the main issue here
I agree though that nothing online is truly private
Am I being too paranoid in using fake answers to questions to identify myself to reset passwords? My mom’s maiden name, year of marriage, city of birth, password format, etc. are different, for my mutual fund account, bank, and the generic accounts such as a newspaper website. I’m perpetually worried that someone with access to data from one of these sites can use it to crack into my financial or other important account. And for this, I pay for it by having to maintain a database with all my fake identities, answers, and myriad passwords.
Well, I guess the real question is do you trust the separate security systems of your bank, mutual fund, and newspaper websites, or the security of your database of fake ID’s more? To be honest, I think as long as you create a low level password/ID and a high level password/ID and change your passwords every month you should be fine.
We don’t give out any email addresses or personal info. Period. Not sure where they got your info, caltanner, but it wasn’t College Confidential.
It’s possible you registered on another site that shared your info with the spammer in question.