2018 plebes --Do yourself a favor

ConnorP326 said:
Will the retailers use anything posted on social media as a means of breaking you down?
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Yes, because once you've tagged something #usna18, they've got you, and can track back to stuff you posted forever ago, and follow whatever you post tomorrow -- with all of that "following" happening without actually "following" you. Once they've figured out your social media identity, they can add your id to a unique column through a third-party twitter host like tweetdeck.

^ The above posts by me are meant to serve as a public service announcement about how easy it is to track people on social media. It's not like you can get away with ONE lousy hashtagged post.

A member of my DS's cadre has a private Instagram account (that's good -- private accounts are better) and his ID is not his real name (that's also good). Normally, a parent of one of his underclassmen would never be able to find him. However, his GF posted ONE picture of the two of them using a hashtag students at the school sometimes use. I saw the picture because I check out that hashtag for interesting stuff going on. This guy has been a bit of a pain to my son, so when I saw the picture, you know, I recoiled for a second, but then I followed the girl's Instagram back a few months, and was able to figure out his Instagram ID. Then I searched for that same ID name on Twitter, and sure enough he has a Twitter account with the same ID. Now I can "follow" him on Twitter, (without really following) because his Twitter account isn't locked down like the Instagram one is. Does any of this matter? No. I'm a parent. I'm going to do NOTHING with the information. Ever. But does that prevent someone else from following the same path I did to get dirt on him? No. The whole thing took me about 10 clicks.

I guess ethically the right thing to do would be to tell him he should change one of those ID names, but, well, THAT would be super weird.

All I'm saying is... I found this guy because of ONE picture somebody ELSE posted of him that was tagged with the college he goes to. In that one picture, there were no names, no tags back to a person, just a random but often used school tag. If you are serious about protecting your social media presence and you're not sure what you're doing, just don't post anything publicly. And when the girlfriend's friend takes a picture of you, say outloud, "No pictures of me in your Instagram. It's a military thing."

/end public service announcement
 
It also has to be taken into account that many of these accounts are most likely fake trolling accounts. Also, these new appointees are excited and eager and most likely not thinking rationally due to the excitement.


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SwimmingMid said:
What saddens me is the cynicism and arrogance some Mids seem to embody when replying to some of the tweets.
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To be fair only 1 replied to you, I think it's more an attitude of protection over what they see as an intrusion on the place they love to hate (and not everybody there is a kind and gentle person).To ConnorP: I think most of them are real, a lot of kids are just really excited like you said.
 
Everyone is making such a big deal out of this trying to pretend like it's going to ruin our lives. To all the people out there with twitter, all you have to do is make your account private. Then u can #usna18 and they won't see it, retweet it, or anything. Problem solved.


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StayingPositive said:
Everyone is making such a big deal out of this trying to pretend like it's going to ruin our lives. To all the people out there with twitter, all you have to do is make your account private. Then u can #usna18 and they won't see it, retweet it, or anything. Problem solved.
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That's the whole point -- it becomes a big deal because people are stupid enough to post publicly and add hashtags making it easy for people with the wrong intentions to single them out. If you're a plebe, maybe it won't ruin your life, or maybe it will. Hopefully it won't, but all of it is avoidable by simply resisting the urge to post information best kept private and resisting the urge to hashtag.
 
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