Net Safety – Part 2

I like my series at the moment it seems!

It seems every man and his dog is talking about Google’s new toy, Streetview. Streetview is a nifty little creation that allows you to view almost every street in Aus at ground level. I had a fair bit of fun with it yesterday, checking out old haunts and favourite places and the like. On the whole I actually really like Streetview and can see many uses for it, notably if I am going somewhere new, I can check out what the place looks like online before going there, hopefully helping me find it easier!

But what are, if any, the negatives of Streetview? Well one ‘possible’ negative is it ‘could’ most definately help online stalkers. Now i want to say right now, this MAY be a weakness, it is not necessarily, and I am not of the crowd who are calling for googles head because of the ‘invasion of privacy.’ As it stands, nothing viewable on streetview could not be seen by any person who drives around, so to call it an invasion of privacy is a bit strong IMO.

What it ‘may’ do is make it easier for stalkers to decide on whether or not to go with a ‘target’ they ahve chosen. In my post, Net Safety, I said the following;

The presenter logged into a phony account of a very popular social networking website. The phony account was deliberately set up by the school for the purpose of looking into how safely the children at the school used these sites. What happened next was enough to definately worry a lot of parents I believe.

Within 2 minutes the presenter had ’searched’ a random school, chosen a person and using only 2 details…their name and their location (which was the suburb they lived in) had a satellite image of their house on the screen. None of the techniques used were difficult. Most people who have ANY understanding of the internet know the sites that were used to do this. And the only info required was a surname (which does need to be obscure, if your a Smith you are probably safe) and the suburb of residence. What was scary is of the students profiles shown…70% of them listed their full name AND suburb.

So with the advent of streetview…not only can someone get a satellite image (thus checking the overall lay of the land, looking for obscure places and the like), but they can check out what the house frontage looks like. Now, as I have said above, if somebody wanted to drive past they could see this anyway. This technology doesn’t provide NEW ways, but it does help, because instead of having to get in a car and ‘drive past’, they can now do it, whilst chatting online.

Why does this concern me? Simply because it has been shown that the method I have described is a major one used by internet stalkers when chosing someone to stalk. And though i definately don’t want to live in a world where everything we do is decided based on ‘fear’, it just highlights for me to importance of teaching our children (and even learning for ourselves) what safe net use looks like. The more google grows and the more funky tools it brings out (which i support and enjoy!), the more we have to be aware just what we say in cyberspace and what info we allow to be known!