privacy – Something to Ponder About

I recently volunteered to assist an animal rescue group. I am retired so would like to contribute more to community not-for-profit organizations.

This group have a private messenger chat so that they can access volunteers quickly when someone has called in an injured animal. I put my hand up and I wanted to help. I was added to the private group chat as advised during my “induction.”

All good so far.

Recently, a message came in via the group chat that help was needed, at a location, less than 1 km away from my place. The main rescuer, it went on to say, has a bad back and needs help lifting a cage. I am new at this task, but okay, I think, sure I can help. I indicate this on the group chat saying I can be there in a jiffy.

There is no response.

Just silence, which seems highly unusual, going by what I have read so far on past chat convos. So after ten minutes or so, I again message the group: “Look I am new at this, it would be my first rescue, but I can definitely help lift the cage and am in walking distance of the location.“

The response is strange: “If you do want to help, you will have to contact Don.”

Me: “Who is Don and how do I contact him?“

After 10 minutes, the response comes: “I don’t give out other people’s phone numbers.”

I mull over this and think how, the devil, am I to help if I am not given the contact details of the person I need to contact.

So I give up. Maybe this group isn’t for me. They are clearly worried about privacy issues. Which frustrates me, well, it really pisses me off. I could discuss this later with the President, to clarify matters but right now I feel unsure if this is the right group for me in my retirement. It all seems a little too hard. Doesn’t it?

What do you think?

Privacy Issues

How many times have you, as an individual, listed your phone number on a internet sales purchase, delivery form, survey, hotel, tradesmen enquiry, or Covid declaration in a cafe, of late? If you are like me, it is all the darn time. So why are they frightened of giving out a number in a closed group within a private chat amongst volunteers who are all interested in helping animals, I wonder?

The irony is a week or so later, an unrelated email comes out with all and sundry’s email addresses listed. So much for privacy concerns.

Has privacy issues gone so far as to block communication?*

*N.B. I am not advocating advertising your phone number publicly, as no one wants unfettered offers aka spam texts or messages that contain offers of enlargement medications, bitcoin or the opportunity to be the sole beneficiary of an inheritance from a stranger from Sierra Leone, do they? Me neither.

What pisses you off lately?

Here are 18 insignificant things that seriously piss people off – seriously!

What would you do, if you were me?

So you get a great idea, and it doesn’t happen all the time, does it? I mean, as much as we want them to, those moments of brilliance don’t come around every day, (at least not for me), so we should capitalize on them where we can.

How do we do that? We go ahead, publish our idea on the net, maybe even market it a bit, and if you are an amateur blogger, usually without thought of monetary compensation, in that the idea is free in the name of sharing information. You feel secure in the knowledge that the world is happily benefiting from your idea and being morally upstanding in proliferating it, right? Well……

Then one day, you google it, or explore a tag …. Bingo!!!! Someone else has taken your idea and claimed it as their own, with no credit, no ping-back, or acknowledgement what so ever that I had the original idea!

The first time it happened I thought it was flattering –

Second time, nah, must be a coincidence –

Third time, I am a little concerned –

Fourth time, I am really cheezed off!

Do people have no moral backbone? No sense of copyright? Perhaps they simply trawl the net and regurgitate ideas from others?

What do I do in response? Rant on in the privacy of my home about plagiarism, copyright infringement, or attempt to report them? But what about the ‘community’ one builds around our ideas?

The ideas are not just stolen, but potential community members too are lost to other groups. Groups that I am excluded from due to ignorance of their existence!

But my twenty something highly computer literate son tries to placate me with:

“Mum, reality check: it is the internet!” (like somehow this makes it ok) “Request a take down notice or report them”

Okay! Let’s see how that worked for me:

Reporting them to Youtube/ Facebook or the net: zero results.

Direct contact via email – one positive result

This eventually resulted in the removal of a video from youtube, only because the film maker claimed he did not have time to check the validity of my claim! Time!!! Not because it might have been an error, morally reprehensible, legally wrong, or anything else, but in the interests of time alone! Ha!

Some victims of cyber harassment take to facebook and contact the parents of these youth who indulge in this kind of intimidation, so is this the approach the internet users of today understand?

Somehow, approaching their mothers about copyright infringement is doomed to failure, as these kids are not familiar with the values of ownership, and generally speaking these values come to us from our parents, so I doubt I will find any joy there.

I do lay the blame, to some extent, on the sharing mechanisms for leading the youth to believe it is okay to take and not give credit. Hey, it is nice to share, but we don’t share everything, and, if we do, we don’t then claim it as our own!! Give credit where credit is due, comprende? It doesn’t take much time, but means a lot.

Then I found this wonderful little cheat sheet from digital cameraworld.com , that is incredibly useful in untangling the whole copyright issue, at least in regard to photography use. It makes for something interesting to ponder about.

Here it is and please note that this is digital camera world.com’s work!!