NOTICE: Facebook And Google Indexing Your Firearm Serial Numbers

[not new guy]

What about the eFA10s I have the sellers email to my gmail account?

 

[jpm]

What about the eFA10s I have the sellers email to my gmail account?

google thanks you for providing all that great info to them via OCR!

 

[enbloc]

Hey, what if I copy/paste a photo ripped from the internet, and that gun is later stolen and used in a shooting? Will a search come back to me too?

Just kidding. I don't give a shit...

 

[Dench]

You are enjoying one of the benefits of pseudo-anonymity; you do not fear your co-workers finding out what you post because we only know you as your username. That is the difference between forums and "social media."

Oh, I fear it. And I don't say that jokingly or to be ironic. Our social media policy at work is so inept and probably illegal that I don't even know how our lawyer and our employers lawyers didnt laugh it out of the room. But both parties agreed to it and my side gave exactly zero in return for what is essentially a drag net mechanism to disciplined or fire people as needed. I've brought it up several times to those in charge. I was told by them it all seemed pretty iron clad. And that I have nothing to worry about anyway.

I have something to worry about, alright. So do my peers. And I'm one of the very few who think it's dangerous. The sheep say bah. bahhhhhhhhhh.

I'd give a recent example of something at work related to this loosely, but I'd be instantly identifiable. I've said it before here recently, I'll be writing a book. I'm at the point now where I tell stories about work to friends and family and people bluntly tell me they don't believe it.

I've had a lot of weird jobs. And I'm sure I'm a complete pain in the ass to manage. I've been to a lot of weird places and worked both white and blue collar jobs. Never in my life have I ever imagined what goes on at my work is a thing. It's like it's own genre of insanity - in the least cool and most sad fashion possible. There are many people at my work who would out me just out of boredom to see how it turned out.

I'm in the Purge era of my situation. Is the NKVD coming tonight? No? Tomorrow? What about the neighbor was he arrested yet and taken in? It's not a matter of it, but when. And like a good Soviet I am going to eat shit like a pro when it happens. Instead of signing a false confession I'll see them in court, though. I'm not going to rub it in their faces in the meantime. I have better things to do. But figuring out who I am based off this account is easy. Just like you, Tim Smith. I know exactly who you are.

 

[milktree]

I'm more worried about the GPS info on a pic than the serial #

I have a script that replaces the GPS location info in images with a pseudo-random locations.

This more than hides the data, it injects bad data.

 

[minininjer]

Yaaa and that’s why I remove the serial number from my guns.

digitally... of course!

 

[enbloc]

Yaaa and that’s why I remove the serial number from my guns.

digitally... of course!

Lol. I'm more of an analog kind of guy...

 

[Waher]

I'm more worried about the GPS info on a pic than the serial #

That's why you clear the metadata before uploading and after obscuring the serial #.

 

[mibro]

While we're doing this, I'm 100% certain that something on my laptop - probably Google - listens to everything I say, probably records it all and at a minimum does keyword analysis that is only used right now to serve up targeted ads.

God help us if the wrong people ever get free rein to use this capability.

 

[Mountain]

You wrote something stupid and now want to troll me?? Lol. That's almost as funny as you believing that's theres even a scintilla of anonymity on reddit or nes.

I have had a long day. Your humor is appreciated, but I'm not looking to waste my time arguing with someone who doesnt understand anonymity online. So I will have to check out now. (Still chuckling...)

I think you need to Google the term 'pseudo'.

 

[straightshooterjake]

Hey, what if I copy/paste a photo ripped from the internet, and that gun is later stolen and used in a shooting? Will a search come back to me too?

Mostly not. This is the nice thing about internet search. A search may find your post, but it will also return the same place that you found the image, and if it is a popular image, lots of other places too.

I have a script that replaces the GPS location info in images with a pseudo-random locations.

This more than hides the data, it injects bad data.

This. Injecting bad data is the way to at least slightly reduce the effectiveness of pervasive surveillance and data mining. Keep in mind that these algorithms are not looking for firearms serial numbers, they are doing optical character recognition (OCR) for anything that increases the value of searching, and serial numbers and licence plates are just a few of the things that fall out. For those with the skills, changing serial numbers and license plates in photo editing software will have more effect than blocking them out.

What is really needed is an app that will pre-process images and do deepfake modification to text in the image. You really need to do a good job or OCR software could notice that the image is modified. The app should randomly modify GPS at the same time.

 

[AHM]

Lol. I'm more of an analog kind of guy...

You scratched off the wrong engraving.

 

[KBCraig]

I've posted many pictures of guns on the internet. Some of them were mine. Some of those that were mine, no longer are. Guess which ones are which?