Why don't many forum members put their location in their profile?

How is this related to the 5th gen 4runner?

 

Running out of stuff to talk about. People love jumping on this stuff. I do.

Sold a ton of stuff though and usually has gone well. Except..

I was trying to sell my stock wheels and tires after upgrading the 4runner. Texting with this guy on Craigslist and after I refused to practically give them away he says he's going to come kill me.

I google his phone number and he's a 1 man business owner plumber.

Lol...so I text him - Google review: "I tried selling 'John Smith' of ABC Plumbing some wheels and he threatened to come kill me"

And we stopped texting.


The other paranoid thing is, I have all my mods listed on this site and im slightly worried im sending a flag out there about how great my 4runner would be to steal. I know these things dont get stollen much and never heard of a stollen 4runner here but a lot of cars get stolen in the Bay Area and I've met several guys who have had their modded Hondas stolen, but that's Hondas.

 

I am curious why many forum members use a fake User name.

 

Wait....your name is really @Captain Spalding ?????????????? IRL?!?!?

 

It was really embarrassing in elementary school during roll call. Who gives their kid the first name “Captain?”

 

Lol

 

I chose not to add my location to my profile.

 

Every morning at work we'd be given a "hot sheet", which listed all the stolen vehicles in the county for that particular day. The list was anywhere from 10-20 vehicles long, and without fail, over decades of looking at these sheets, two thirds of the vehicles would be Honda Civics, with a few Accords thrown in as well for good measure.

 

Yep exactly! I don't get the blurring of the plates. You drive around, park it all in publics view but on a specific vehicle forum you have to hide it??? Why

 

Im on the fence but again as I was saying, I've listed and have pictures of all my mods and if i wanted to steal cars I would go to build sections on forums. You could then get their address from the license plate.

Let's say someone has an 18k sound system listed in their build. You could pretty quickly and easily strip those speakers and amps out if you stole that car.

 

Yeah sure IF they lived within a reasonable distance.

 

Absolutely yes.

 

Holy guacamole how much you are wrong!

Anything Toyota get stolen A LOT around where I live. Just last year my 2 houses down neighbor had his 3D gen Taco stolen, he was pissed off as it just aged out of his 'no depreciation' waiver. Personally, when I park my 4Runner outside I have a club, ignition circuit interrupter, and have fake OBD reader port. It is THAT bad over here. My insurance also informed me that my 4Runner on most-stolen list, they wanted me to install some remote-disable tracker that they control and when I told them to pound sand jacked up my rates nearly 30%.

 

I mean really, who gives a shit where we are? As long as y'all aren't here, that is really all that matters. We have enough real drama to deal with already without djwanker spray painting our rocks, or borracho getting deported, or who ever wanting tools or help...you get the point. /S

 

Wow. Thats insane. I was just going off what I hear about getting stollen around here and the data for USA. Do you mind me asking about where you live that its that bad with toyotas?

 

I live a few hours drive away from notorious international port, it is huge problem with cars ending in containers and shipped to Africa and Middle East. Guess what, they like Toyotas and especially offload-capable ones. My neighbor's Taco now probably has a large cal machine gun mod installed.

 

The top-ten list is ranked by total numbers stolen and doesn't take into account numbers sold. Ford sold 761,000 F-series trucks in 2023 to see 15,852 stolen. Toyota sold 110,000 4Runners in 2023. Even if one out of ten 4Runners is stolen, it still wouldn't make the top-ten list

 

Darn you! You beat me to it. I was just going to google that photo and attach it here when I read his comment. Hahahaha

 

I was trying to quickly do it because I knew someone was going to beat me to it if i waited lol

 

Thanks.

Thank you for your Service > Hooah

 

It’s probably important to mention that doing this kind of data set linking does not require a person with an intent to find your info. Nobody needs to be “out to get you”. It all can be done automatically using machine learning/ai tools. There’s plenty of commercial motivation to find out personal identity from partial info. Customers for this type of personal identity linking are plenty…employers, governmental, advertising, insurance companies, etc).

 

Outside of the prevalence of rust and road salt, location hardly makes a difference when talking about 4runner issues if you're within North America. But let's say I want to piece together who you are, if you posted the same photo on reddit that you did on this forum for a topic, I could use the location on your forum bio to narrow down you're IRL identity using whatever I see in you're reddit account.

There isn't much to gain by posting your location, but there could be a whole lot to lose.

The location is relevant for selling parts, but if you're buying parts sharing your location at some point is unavoidable. But there is no reason to do it beforehand

 

I like it. Simple cost/benefit analysis. Information should come at a cost when someone else profits off of the data

 

When I was in high school I had a buddy whose first name was Colonel. After high school he joined the army as an enlisted man. I bet he had some interesting confrontations.

 

His last name wasn't Sanders, was it?

 

Maybe Colonel of the Urinal?

 

I bet his name was Klink, for those who know. Hoooooogaaaaan!

 

Since @Grandpawmoses doesn't list his location, you don't know if he's in Kentucky.