When I was giving presentations to fairly large groups for a larger company, the feedback forms would often include both "way too basic" and "really great insights."

>We agree that doxxing is dangerous online yes?

Potentially. But this is also information that was not historically a deep dark secret absent measures that, to a first approximation, no one took.

I went down a bit of a rabbit hole on re-indentification a while back related to a research journal I was helping with and some presentations I was giving. One of the things I ran across was how easy it was to de-anonymize healthcare records from way less information than one might assume.

I really feel like the first step here should be to make deanonymization illegal. Obviously it wouldn't fix everything, but there's a bit of an implicit breach of contract if people are promised their data is anonymous, but then it's sold to someone else who breaks that, but as far as I can tell there's no law against what's pretty clearly a violation of the premise under which the data was allowed to be collected.

The ownership and selling price of a parcel of property are pretty much a matter of public record throughout most (all?) of the US along with aa number of other things. Deeds are recorded with the county clerk in MA.

Some of that can be obfuscated through LLCs and trusts but some things are pretty much a matter of public record that not everyone agrees should be. More is doubtless available in some locales. I don't think property tax charges are public where I live though who knows if I asked the town clerk nicely. (Property taxes are at the town level where I live.)

I have an ME (pretty much MSc). I'm not sure anyone in the US really cares about the degree and I'd never put it beside my name except on a formal resume. I wouldn't say no effort; it took a couple of years.

And a lot of countries have things like national IDs that, rightly or wrongly, given things like RealID and passports, that a lot of Americans just don't like on principle.

There's a ton of information in the US that is accessible to various degrees--especially through the the deep web much less background investigations. Unless you're a wealthy person who can set up various levels of trusts you can't really hide them.

You can of course disagree about what what should actually be part of a transparent public record. (Though I suspect a lot of people post-date what was generally available in a "phone book.")

It also depends on the company.

I was picking up my buffet dinner at a company event in Europe and the CEO who I somewhat knew was alongside; this was a moderately large company--maybe 10K employees at that point. We went to sit down at a table and the $EUROPEAN_COUNTRY people there were basically "Nah, we'd prefer to speak our own language." So the CEO and I went down to sit at another more welcoming table. (And had a very pleasant discussion about his upcoming family vacation and forwarded him some info.)

Not sure of the point but there are definitely cultural differednces on many dimensions on what you can do and can't do.

Even going back decades, I recall major US university libraries served a dual function as having books, reference librarians, and serving as study and group work spaces. Maybe it's changed a bit but it's not new.

Dual use is definitely not a new thing; sacrificing the ostensible primary use for the secondary seems to raise the author's ire (and mine).

I agree to some degree. But I'd also note that some of the biggest libraries don't have open stacks.