[widforss]

What's the reason for keeping your address a secret? Genuinely curious, as where I live (se) almost all peoples addresses are public information, and it's really practical.

[dredmorbius]

33 bits. Information is a force multiplier, not power itself (Francis Bacon was wrong.)

https://33bits.wordpress.com/about/

It takes only 33 bits of distinctive information to identify a given person. Specific information about a person, including background, can help provide further information on them -- it tells you where to look (and more importantly, a very good idea as to where not to), who to talk to, and what they might have done.

"If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged."

- Cardinal Richelieu (a/k/a Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal-Duc de Richelieu et de Fronsac)

"the forced revelation of information makes individual privilege and power more important. When everyone has to play with their cards on the table, so to speak, then people who feel like they can be themselves without consequence do so freely -- these generally being people with support groups of like-minded people, and who are neither economically nor physically vulnerable. People who are more vulnerable to consequences use concealment as a method of protection: it makes it possible to speak freely about controversial subjects, or even about any subjects, without fear of harassment."

https://plus.google.com/+YonatanZunger/posts/WegYVNkZQqq

(Yonatan Zunger is the former chief architect of Google+.)

[corvallis]

I work with prisoners. I have a unique name. My family members and I are the only people with our names in the country, and possibly the world.

If you google my name, you will find my family (parents, sibling), their home address, phone numbers, ages, occupations. It is local.

Upon release or through veiled communication, I or my family members could easily be targeted for harm by inmates or former inmates.

This is a very real concern for me. I have found no way to permanently remove this information from search results.

I encourage people to think more creatively when they cannot think of potential disadvantages of easily searchable personal information.

[wolco]

Create a batch of new yous' with different addresses and make them public across the internet. Your problem is too little misinformation.

[geofft]

> What's the reason for keeping your address a secret?

I, and the people I love, have public political opinions on the internet, and SWATting is a thing.

I can either keep my address a secret (and I do; I use my PO Box whenever possible), or I can decline to participate in public civic discourse and encourage the people I love to do the same.

[daemin]

I think it's not so much keeping this sort of information a secret, it has never really been a secret as anyone with some motivation could find out these things. The big thing these days with computerisation and the Internet is it is making these things trivial to acquire, accumulate, and search. It's not a matter of going to offices and looking through paper records, because it's all at someone's fingertips.

[huhtenberg]

> it's really practical

To what end?

I can't think of a situation when someone might need my address and not being able to get it from me directly.

[bertil]

Addresses can be used for authentication—it routinely is in the UK where I live now.

There are also possible physical safety issues, especially in a country like the US were people seem to have guns and are willing to use them.

I miss Sweden’s transparency and widespread’s trust.

[EADGBE]

Lookup address-by-name seems much more damning than lookup-name-by-address.

Much less is to be assumed about you, like just your name.

Versus the country you live in, state/province/territory, city/village/township, neighborhood, etc.