[HN Gopher] Estate agent's hi-tech house tour exposes personal data
___________________________________________________________________
Estate agent's hi-tech house tour exposes personal data
Author : salgernon
Score : 31 points
Date : 2021-04-13 20:03 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| cortesoft wrote:
| This is basically like an open house. They should have prepped
| the house the same way before taking these photos.
|
| The high tech part seems not really related. The same thing would
| have happened with plain photos, or an in person open house.
| munk-a wrote:
| They should've but the tech part is relevant. Obvious bad
| actors that are snooping around in open houses are certainly an
| issue but can be remediated a lot easier - you can kick those
| visitors out and bar folks with a history of snooping from
| entry - both of which work _relatively_ well on the local
| level.
|
| I think tech is specifically relevant here since this is
| another clear example of scaling up beyond cultural norms using
| technology causing emergent security issues - the issues were
| present all along but there were some systems in place to limit
| how harmful they could be and technology has released us from
| those limits.
| emodendroket wrote:
| Typically in an open house just anybody can walk in, can't
| they? It's not like they ask you for ID.
| zaphod12 wrote:
| I've seen realtors ask for ID unless you're accompanied by
| another realtor (who would leave a card). Basically they
| want a record of people through the house in case something
| does happen. You could easily make a fake business card, of
| course... professional courtesy means a realtor seldom asks
| another for an id. But this would likely only work briefly
| in a given area once word got out.
| munk-a wrote:
| It isn't a public space so you can be barred from entry
| and, often, you'll be let into the house by a realtor. If
| that realtor recognizes you as abusing open houses they can
| just refuse you entry or take a more extreme measure.
| monocasa wrote:
| I'm not sure that I would trust a realtor to recognize
| war driving (war showing?).
| krisoft wrote:
| Realtors are there to sell houses. I wouldn't be
| surprised if most of them had a keen "nose" to figure out
| who is just "interested" and who means real business.
| After all it is in their best interest to not waste their
| time with lookie-loos.
|
| Obviously that doesn't mean that one can't pretend well
| enough once or twice, but not at a scale where this
| becomes a viable avenue to criminals.
| brundolf wrote:
| > scaling up beyond cultural norms
|
| This is a great way of framing a certain class of problems
| that I think people on HN tend to dismiss. "Technically we're
| doing the same thing as before!" Yes, but as we should all
| know from the engineering side of things, scale is still very
| relevant.
| [deleted]
| open-source-ux wrote:
| " _clues about their political views based on their choices of
| reading material_ "
|
| Interesting. Millions of people have work-related zoom meetings
| (or publicly posted webinars) while sitting in front of their
| bookshelves. Many people don't have a problem with that. Some of
| those books might even be strategically placed so that they are
| in clear view. You can discern a little about someone's interests
| by what's on their bookshelves, but perhaps not always
| accurately.
|
| I wonder how people feel about displaying the contents of their
| bookshelf online while onscreen? I'm guessing for most people
| it's not a concern.
|
| Here's Bret Victor's bookshelf from 2015 which we posted himself
| on his website. Click to zoom: http://worrydream.com/Shelf2015/
| spitfire wrote:
| > "clues about their political views based on their choices of
| reading material"
|
| This is exactly why I put Karl Marx next to F a Hayek. It's
| like a social logic bomb.
| vmception wrote:
| I don't even open my kindle app around people anymore because
| of that assumption
|
| Glad I never got into bookshelves (and that nobody of child
| bearing age judges people on the lack of physically displayed
| books in their dwelling)
| Robotbeat wrote:
| I don't judge people by lack of bookshelves, but I actually
| LOVE looking at folks' bookshelves. It basically tells you
| what their interests & philosophical history were from age 18
| to 30 (and mostly in the college years) in a concise way.
|
| People change a lot over time; I don't _judge_ people on what
| they have on their bookshelf, but it definitely provides fast
| context for their worldview, providing background for who
| they are today and how their opinions developed. It provides
| an immediate jumping off point to discuss common interests
| and ideas.
|
| There's nothing better for this purpose.
| vmception wrote:
| It's over its not happening anymore. Follow people's
| "stories" to see what they signal or post about, which is
| currently common for people that are _currently_ 18 to 30.
|
| There is missing metadata in that approach just like there
| is missing metadata in the bookshelf approach.
|
| What we need is a way to make filter bubbles and echo
| chambers fungible. Like, we should be able to alter our
| user session to that of our contact's, with their consent.
| Transmit their whole data-broker profile to our computer
| and look at it. Or browse the internet and social networks
| as if you had their session, just to see how search results
| are different, how news headlines are different, which
| articles are shared to them, what their stories are
| reinforcing.
|
| That will be even more insightful than what your world used
| to be like.
| smthngwitty wrote:
| You can even buy 'Books by the Foot'[1] on a particular topic
| to dress up your Zoom set up.
|
| [1] https://www.booksbythefoot.com/
| bentcorner wrote:
| > _Many people don 't have a problem with that._
|
| My workplace has specific training to use the blurring feature
| of the conferencing app we use, specifically for
| security/privacy reasons. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that
| other work places do the same thing.
| notsureaboutpg wrote:
| This sucks. Just because I read or own a book does not mean I
| agree with what's written inside it. You can never learn things
| you don't agree with if you won't even read them or if people
| will assume you believe everything in a book you read.
| ekrebs wrote:
| Agents and homeowners have been taking photos of homes for sale
| for decades, and all sorts of private info has leaked this way.
| I'm in the industry on the tech side and I've seen photos of
| people naked in mirrors, signed documents, children,
| hobbies/interests, framed photos saying things like "Joseph
| Edward Smith - born Aug 6, 2010", bills and more.
|
| This technology makes it more likely for the volume of leaked
| data to increase, and the photo resolutions give more data per
| image, but agents have been trained to stage houses for a long
| time and should be expected to handle this. Blame the agent.
|
| Although the tech certainly has room for improvement. All it
| takes is for someone to sue Zillow for exposing their private
| images online for automatic blurring technology to magically
| appear.
| myself248 wrote:
| What's obnoxious is there's no interface to go in and blur the
| photos after they're taken. The software just isn't built for it;
| it's meant for agents to operate with little to no technical
| knowledge.
| aaron695 wrote:
| A good example of how the internet is not compareable to real
| life. Whenever someone handwaves "but that's always happened"
|
| In person, the chance of a local person traveling to your house
| to photograph a cheque is non-existent.
|
| On the internet you can script a search of all homes. Its all
| about the ability to search quickly.
|
| I see companies are getting photos of my front door now when
| packages get delivered. I wonder what we can get from that....
| munk-a wrote:
| Maybe put a QR code on your door and see where you get hits
| from?
|
| Alternatively set up a honeypot by gluing a fake bill to your
| mailbox as if it's a letter dangling out with some personal
| information on the envelope? It'd be interesting to see if
| anyone is running any automatic extraction over pictures of
| mailboxes.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-04-13 23:00 UTC)