cranky old privacy geezer

I found this interesting but much too close to home.

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Last month I had the honor of being my county's first Fourth of July fireworks casualty.

I spoiled the dignity of the occasion by getting into an argument with the emergency room clerk because I wouldn't allow her to photocopy my driver's license in order to be trusted to pay cash. I was really getting into the argument until I looked around the triage room and saw that people were looking at me strangely; like I had just told a Linux Users Group, "Windows XP is really cool" or something similar.

Then it hit me...I had become a Curmudgeon, a cranky old privacy geezer.

There are all kinds of things to be cranky about. They say that Howard Hughes spent his last days as a germ curmudgeon. The reclusive billionaire, who virtually created the aerospace industry, invented the underwire bra and built the flying boat "Spruce Goose," died in his Vegas tower of malnutrition caused by peculiar eating and sanitary habits stemming from his aversion to germs. At the time of his death, his hair and fingernails had not been cut for years because he believed that cutting them would introduce new germs into his system.

Data curmudgeons feel like that about their personal information flowing into the "Bytegeist" of the burgeoning Internet.

For more:

http://news.com.com/2010-1071-947327...e.dht.nl-sty.0

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All the money in the world can't save you from your self.

Curmudgeon!
I like that word. Can i keep it :) Please
Mike

I can understand where you were coming from. It is odd to think that behavior like that is often thought of as safe and casually carried out. I know I am skeptical about giving my credit card to a waitress at a resturant. I just feel that I should be able to pay it myself. Everyone has there reasons.

i with you on that one digitalgadfly and i have to laugh when someone gets their first internet account and latter discovers charges on their credit card they didn't make, right away they start screaming they've beem hacked. After spening the whole day handing their credit card to total strangers and allowing them to walk away with it, sometimes into another room.