Big Brother?

[spyknee]

 
So,
I'm gonna visit a work friend. I'm on my cell and he gives me his home address, I write it down. Now I goto my computer and call up google maps to get a route. I type in the first number of his address in the box, boom an auto complete box opens with the exact address and zipcode I had just written down. WTF I only input a single digit and it pulled out everything down to the zip code. Just to weird!

[Black Viper]

You probably already entered his address elsewhere on the computer and it is just attempting to find the best match for you.

[spyknee]

 
No BV,
Thats what caught my attention, The only time I ever even knew that address existed was when I wrote it down on paper, 1 min before. Never been in my computer. Maybe my cell is somehow connected?

[Just Rachel]

Well, that's freaky! I've had one experience along the same lines that frightened me also.  During some down time at work I accessed our family site at myfamily.com.  Since that time I get emails from myfamily at my work address which I would NEVER enter on any site that isn't totally work related.  Very frightening!!!

[DJanda]

There are many web-crawler bots out there, both benign and not so benign. They constantly pick up data and then the search engines controlling them try to find relationships to said data in their collected databases. So, when you enter any data (locations, family relationships, your name -- etc, etc, ad infinitum, ad naueseum... amen) those search engines quickly (multiple gigabytes per sec, remember?) make some sense out of it and post it in their databases.

Ergo, if you have "fill-in" enabled for data entry, the database (probably google) just helpfully fills in what they have. If the data is wrong, and you correct it -- voila! The cycle starts again. (This is how google and other search engines are able to find data so quickly. They don't search the net in real time, they just search their databases.) Such data collection can happen even though the place where you sent the data to in the first place promises not to share the data. Some web-crawler might have picked it up "en-route." The best assurance of this not happening is if you are using a "secure" site with very good encryption for data transmission. Even this can be compromised though. Black Viper said it best when he said "The only data which is secure is that which doesn't exist" (I hope I got that right BV).

You say that you only sent the info via phone? The days of phones just being connected with a pair of wires is long gone. Nowadays, all of the stuff goes through electronic (read that as "computerized") switchboards. And thus the phone system is just another type of "web."
The voice transmission is digitized (remember that most long distance calls are sent to (and sent back from) satellites (no wires there). The voice part may or may not be compromised, but it doesn't matter. The connected numbers are the real data here. Most phone numbers are a matter of public record and so, the call shows a "link" which is everything in a database. Then if the last names match, eureka! A family member -- more data in the database.

BTW,  Also, some snail-mail sales and/or "research" enterprises, pay good money for those collected databases.

What I am trying to get across to you folks is that any sense of security that you have about the data on your computer exists only in your mind. This is doubly true about data posted to the internet. Yes, I'm paranoid, but that doesn't change the facts. Having worked on high security projects most of my professional life, I am used to "living in a fishbowl" and try to conduct my life accordingly. Just remember, "The fact that you are not paranoid does not mean that "they" aren't out to get you." :-D

[spyknee]

DJANDA,
Understood, thats why I do not use the net but to purchase. No bank accounts, no credit card account info. But I never googled the guys address or name ever. Original info from cell phone. Type a single number digit, boom, the guys address down to the zip. A single digit should have popped many possibilities, only one was shown. The one I was looking for exactly! My cell company and my dsl company are the same. Some kind of cell monitoring....................

[DJanda]

Check the edited version of my above diatribe :-) Cell phones are themselves mostly computer and worse yet are small radio transmitters. They are very easily compromised. However, I suspect that the data from the cell phone was put into some relational database and then when you started to enter an address, that particular digit may have been unique to "addresses related to you" and the database was just trying to be helpful.

[spyknee]

 
In the hands of our current world culture, scary stuff. The world is full of mini Hitlers, somehow, this does not bode well! Maybe time to pull the jack in the back of my head. LOL