RE: Stag GIS

[Dean Cunningham <DeanC@domain.elided>]

Here is the deal, hate to frighten the paronoid people but I can obtain
a list email addresses of all the people subscribed to this list
(including digest) in about 5 minutes.
No tricks, you can to if you follow the instructions on the stag web
site (this can be done for most list servers).

There are 92 subscribers of the stag list and 62 for the stag-digest
list

I can scan the archives for any other names of past subscribers and
check any signatures at the end of some peoples messages for suburb and
work or home phone numbers.

I can then search the online whitepages available and find details of
where people with that surname live off phone company lists.
For example

If you new my surname and first name (which you do cause I put in in my
signature) you can connect to  http://www.whitepages.co.nz and search
for cunningham (look here
http://www.whitepages.co.nz/cgi-bin/search?key=cunningham%20d&ind=3&page
=search&loc=ALL  )

About 200 names are returned.
You then know my first name is dean and eliminate that are not d or dean
You know I work for environment waikato because of my signature , (so as
a thief you probably live in my country) you eliminate all addresses in
the south island and search for just in the waikato region

you then end up with this result

Cunningham D B Rukuhia-Ngahinapouri Rd R D 2 Ohaupo Hamilton 0--7-825
2729  	
Cunningham D J & V D Matarawa Rd Tokoroa 0-7-886 4813  						
Cunningham D K & A K		Rye Rd Taupiri Orini 0-7-824 4816  	
Cunningham D M	Happy Valley Rd R D 3 Te Awamutu 0-7-872 2737  	
Cunningham D M & Clear N J	23 West Ridge Dve Hamilton 0-7-846 3497	
So which one am I? (feel free to ring and ask for dean under some guise
or other (perhaps a free gift for a time share). But if you want to
steal my car you won't cause the body is at the restorers :-)

The point I am trying to make is that there is already information
available from this mailing list and the information you inadvertently
provide to the mailing list (and peoples home pages) to help a so called
thief.

Yes I am a "computer professional" but this is just basic stuff.

So John I would flag away the telephone number and punt for the email
address

People should just be aware of the risks they already face by belonging
to "the net"

"You" probably already recieve spam from direct mailers, where do you
think they got the information from? somewhere out here on "the net"

If someone is detemined to get a stag, they will get it.

Remember the GIS thing is optional.

Insure the car , take acceptable measures and don't go paranoid on us we
need your help to get our cars going again! 

0  0
  |
\__/

And Richard, perhaps you may want to turn off the subscriber listing if
there is no real use for it.

Dean Cunningham
Computer Facilities Manager
Environment Waikato
__________________________________________________________________


>Date: Mon, 04 May 1998 13:20:00 -0700 (PDT)
>From: "Ramerman, John" <jramerman@domain.elided>
>Subject: Stag GIS
>
>Thanks to all for the feed back on this issue.
>
>It is obvious that people consider that details such as an address will 
>facilitate car theft.  Therefore fields (attributes) which can lead to exact 
>location of cars should not be included in the GIS attribute data.  I will 
>modify the table structure to delete these fields and propose to have 
>instead a general location field, only identifying say to suburb/county 
>level.
>
>This leads to another question (or two), which I will now pose.  That is I 
>am going to play the Devil's advocate and see what happens.
>
>What contact data do we include?  Telephone, fax, e_Mail.  Would these be 
>OK?  With a person's name and general location and e_Mail, prospective 
>thieves would be able to find your address quite easily.  So we would leave 
>out the phone number.  Still an e_Mail in some cases will direct a 
>prospective thief to your location.  Following up on the latter, I would 
>suggest thieves already know where you live because of your use of this 
>list.  They will just use the digital phone book to locate all those with 
>your surname and stake out the area to see who drives what.  Pretty scarey 
>stuff.
>
>So what do we do about it?
>
>This is a difficult one to overcome.  I didn't think theft of Stags was such 
>a big issue.  I thought the car's bad reputation would scare away the 
>thieves.  Maybe downunder we don't have quite the problem of classic car 
>theft.  However I use a club lock, an anti theft system and the car is 
>stored behind a locked garage door.  I live in a small court with most of 
>the neighbours at home during the day.  We all know each other and have an 
>effective neighbourhood watch scheme.  Fairly secure I suppose.
>
>Apart from the above I still see a GIS as a pretty useful thing.  It could 
>still be used to identify locations where cars are stolen, (eg to find a 
>pattern), it could have maps displaying car runs, location of businesses 
>useful to us, locate cars by general area, information pages, etc.
>
>In the meantime I have found a person willing to host it.  I now need to 
>obtain the relevant software.  More on the URL etc later.
>
>Regards
>
>John.
>
>