The paranoia of the web

I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt. I tend to trust them until they show me otherwise...mostly because the other way around (not trusting people until they prove themselves to you) leads to a paranoid and miserable life.

When it comes to the web, I'm pretty good at detecting a fraud. Having been on all sides of a web business, I know how to find out things about a site and it's history and owners that most people don't, and I can decode a piece of crap privacy policy or TOS better than most. And since I can do that, I don't have any different paranoia toward someone on eBay than I would someone at a garage sale. Offline and online are pretty much the same to me.

But I'm obviously the exception. Many people have seen news reports or heard isolated stories that scare them about things like SPAM and identity theft. I get emails from people regarding iPrioritize all the time - is it safe, is it secure, do you sell my info, do you charge me without me knowing (don't know how I'd pull that off, but people actually ask it). I can certainly understand their fears and they are somewhat justified. However, I think overall you are safer (or at least as safe) on the web.

My email addresses are all over all my sites, so I get spammed all the time. You know how long it takes me to manually filter out any SPAM that my filter doesn't detect and delete it? About 1 minute for several hundred emails a day. If you don't click the links or download anything from anyone you don't trust, you are fine. SPAM is annoying, but for average Joe who doesn't have their email on the web, it should take a few seconds a week to deal with.

I hear your head "but what about identity theft Adam?" Well, I happen to be a victim of identity theft, and I'm 99.99% sure that it had nothing to do with anything internet related. Back in college (pre-SportsLizard days) someone got a hold of my social security number and opened phone accounts in the Bronx under the name Adam McFarland Jr (how cute) and ran up a bunch of debt. It took me months to clear my name and prove to debt collection agencies that I've never lived in the Bronx and never opened a land line phone account (at least at that point I hadn't).

At that age, I hardly bought anything online, but there were hundreds of people that handled my social security number in insurance agencies, schools, banks (a lot of banks b/c of my student loans), and credit card companies...not to mention people at the post office that could have hi-jacked my mail that had all of that info in it. It was more than likely one of them who stole my identity. They have a much easier time taking your social security number than an employee working for a legit web company would. That info *should* be transacted securely through SSL and encrypted in a database and no one should have access to it. Which is safer?

What I'm trying to say is, there's a somewhat jaded view of the web that causes paranoia among the masses. Don't know of a solution (other than the web aging and people becoming more comfortable with it), but it definitely exists and it'd be nice to see someone educate people.