Must Be The Hair

Sunday, Sept. 28, 2008 - 12:36 a.m.

Last night, while I was avoiding everything else in the world that would have been better to be doing, I was pushing the RANDOM link in Wikipedia, when I came across an obvious case of vandalism: "Firstname Lastname Loves Bill Kaulitz."

In less than ten minutes, here's what I found out about the vandal:

Her first and last name, because bless her heart, she posted it as part of her shenanigans.

A check of the ISP numeric address, automatically tracked by Wikipedia, revealed that the vandalism originated from a server belonging to the State of [STATENAME] Dept of Information Technology, within the specific subdivision alloted to [SCHOOLNAME] School.

I then Googled the combination "Firstname Lastname" + Statename + Schoolname, and in less than three minutes, here's what I found out about her:

The name and location of her high school. The school's mascot.

She's a star player on a certain sports team, and she is a sophomore.

She loves somebody named Bill Kaulitz, who at first I thought was her boyfriend, but further detective work reveals to me that he is the member of the new-to-us German pop group Tokio Hotel. (He's the one with the long electrocuted black hair, reminiscent of how Tina Turner looked back in the 80s.)

If I as a non-professional computer-using housewife can do this kind of work and find out this much about her, what could a predator do? Her vandalism was easily repaired, but my point is that she should know better than to put personal information in an unsecured area like Wikipedia. The Internet is not a toy, and Wikipedia is not a personalized graffiti wall.

I dropped an email to her principal, with the concluding lines: "Obviously the decision whether to speak to her about this now rests with you; my own observation is that by her age, perhaps Firstname needs to understand that not everybody out on the internet is a good person, and that she should consider being a little more careful."

If the principal answers my email, I'll share with the class, so to speak.

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Wow, San Francisco politics is rearing its ugly head again. We get to vote on whether or not the city should own and administer its own power plant.

Oh, THIS should end well. If this comes to fruition, I'll bet you a shiny new nickel that we'll end up cooking our food over burning piles of cow dung.

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That's it! Have a good Sunday!

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