If they what more info on a person, they can go join linkedin.
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My guess is it is more a case of: “Stop arguing with me, I’m more qualified than thee.”
Without bringing any argument/facts to the table.
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Like I always say, you can be qualified but can you do the work. I see it every day in my work. You can have a Code 14 license but can you decent down a road pass with 45Tons loaded and can you operate a 13 speed eaton fuller transmission or 16 speed zf gearbox.
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Re Popia. Yes, we probably need to be more clear in the terms.
I am not a lawyer, but it seems it comes down to this:
- Communicate clearly what you collect and what you use it for.
- Don’t use that information for anything else than the intended lawful purposes.
- Have a plan of what to do should that info be leaked, and what to do to prevent it from leaking.
Now when the terms was written (a little cheekily, because legal documents are so boring otherwise), we did say “don’t use your internet banking password”. The intent behind that is that you should not use any password at all that you care about. If a breach ever occurs, they attacker should ideally get your email address (which he can already get from a hundred other places), and a useless password.
Further to that: The email address is collected for one reason and one reason only. We need a way to do password resets. That’s it. Yes, you can also get notifications of replies to your posts blah blah blah those are all secondary. We will not send you marketing material about deals in our “shop”… snigger…
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If I was a betting man (or argumentative) I would wager that the requester is a degreed man, likely an engineer…
This is bingo, many an experience with this happening in my professional career. In my experience, my personal opinion, Engineers and Attorneys only respect the opinion of peers, as I said, my opinion. There are obviously exceptions.
Groetnis
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Arguing with an engineer is like wrestling with a pig in the mud. The pig likes it.
My wife always proclaims that before introducing me at a party. I have no idea why.
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Of course I find that it is not limited to engineering subjects, you just need an engineer. For example, some biological advances came of age around 2018 and people were talking about using it for Zika and Rabies… then life happened and it went mainstream in a big way. Now as an engineer (well, a software engineer, but the mindset is still there), the technology blew my mind! But trying to discuss it with people is literally like wrestling in the mud, and much as I enjoy it, it tends to mess up the party.
I am not one that can share personal experiences as well as @plonkster, but I feel I want to share this. About 12 years back we went on a trip to the Kruger where we slept out under the stars in tents (in the velt, not in camps). That night 16 people from all over the world were sitting around the campfire and I got bored and started looking for “Critters”, soon I found 3 different Scorpions and quite a few spiders and other interesting crawlers. Not long and I was surrounded by more than halve the group, following me around as I was rambling down the scientific names of all the species I found. Up till today its still an hobby of mine, although I dont have the time to do it.
Some guy from England or Scotland started getting irritated with sitting alone at the fire and started questioning my Qualifications, after I told him that I am an electrician things got crazy… he immediately told everybody to please sit down, as I had no Authority to talk about anything nature related as I had no formal training/degree… the rest of the night was pretty tense as this guy just wont let go of his argument. The guide had to shut him up after a while… I was dumbstruck…
That night led to officials from the Kruger offering me the opportunity to be the Co-Author of a book about the “Critters” of the Kruger. That included free access to the kruger whenever I wanted, but sadly with my position at the mine, and my working hours at the time (including standby and weekend work) I could not accept the offer and to my knowledge the book is still a dream…
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Yes, that ticks me off as well. I almost want to shoot back: You mean you have never heard of self-betterment through reading?
I mean, I really don’t want to blow my (our?) horn too much, but there are just some professions that tend to push you into neighbouring territories, and engineering/software is one of them. We rarely solve our own problems… we solve problems for others. That forces us to know a lot of stuff about a lot of things. Perhaps that is precisely why arguing with an engineer is so futile…
Unless, like two nights ago, they frantically call to have a “dangerous snake” removed from their garage, which turned out to be a litlle 30cm long harmless Red lipped Herald, which just lives off frogs 
. Red lipped Herald
I love them, especially becaus they can give this big “Aggressive” show… enough to scare most people away…
Yip. Just goes to show, that presentation is everything …
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Knowledge is everything. When you don’t know, you have to err on the side of caution. I was in high school, on the farm alone, when one night at midnight there was a knock on the door, and a couple of very distressed employees with their colleague who had been bitten by a snake. They show me the (small brown) snake. Unfortunately I know sh*t about snakes, so I call the neighbour who (having not seen it, this was before WhatsApp) pronounces that it sounds like a night-adder, and we need to leave immediately.
So we jump in the only bakkie on the farm licensed for public roads and I race (at 120km/h, as the Turbo is shot and this is as fast as it will go) to the nearest hospital. By the time I get there the foot is only a little swollen… so I know this has been a complete overreaction. But what are you going to do? When you don’t know, you don’t know
I’m quite different I guess. I find that hearing the opinions of non-engineers can give you a different perspective on things. This is especially true when considering things like user interfaces where an engineer might want loads of information immediately available while a lay person just wants to see if it’s working or not. Also, if I’m struggling to solve a problem, I find that explaining the problem to a lay person forces me to try to frame the problem in a way that they would understand what I’m talking about and just the act of doing that often leads me to a solution without them having to do anything other than listen.
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Have you ever heard of Ducksplaining? The story goes that a software developer had a plastic/rubber duck(ie) in his office, and what he would do is explain the problem in terms that the duck would understand. This allowed him to reframe it and figure it out.
Edit: And then of course this is mandatory watching now too.
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Those are harmless to us humans, but they are very aggresive. So the don’t give that harmless feeling when you find one in your yard 
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I’ve actually also had a weird experience at work once. I was new at the company and hired specifically to extricate IT systems from the previous partner and make it possible to run everything standalone.
After weeks of meetings with EVERYONE, building English dictionaries with terms, going backwards and forwards about what the new system needs to do and not do, what the policy rules are, get everyone on the same page, etc, etc, some guy asks me quite sarcastically, “So Marius, when did you become an expert on life insurance?”. The only answer I could think to give was “Last weekend, of course”.
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Blackheads, Red lips, Brown house and Skaapsteekers were the pets of my youth.
Picture this:
Std 6 CBC boarding school, Silverton, Brother Kennedy (the headmaster) decides to personally conduct a locker raid, Std 6’s weren’t allowed any tuck.
I kept my snake in a cake tin in my locker. Brother Kennedy spotted the tin and asked me angrily:
“What’s in there?!”
“A snake” I replied sheepishly, knowing I would be expelled.
He obviously misheard and shouted:
“Make sure it is eaten by morning!”
And off he went to the next locker.
It’s a Irish pastime banishing snakes.
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At one point I was an expert in medical aid options. Of course not in the actuarial sense, but I knew more than the average guy, courtesy of building a website for a broker. To this day, I’m the guy asking “Is that an insurance product, or a real mutual medical fund?” to the great frustration of salespeople trying to sell cheaper products…