WHO IS WATCHING YOU ?
Relying on the government to protect your privacy is like
asking a peeping tom to install your window blinds.
John Perry Barlow
You decide to buy a book about surfing and find just want you want on bargains.com. You type in your credit card details and send them off to the company which has assured you that your information is safe with them and goes nowhere but to their secure site. You have every right to believe that the only one who is aware of that number (which is a direct link to your checking account) is an impersonal machine that automatically checks to see if your card is valid. Two months later, you order something else from the site and discover your card is on file. How did that happen? What right have they to save it? Worse: can someone who works there use your details for their own purposes?
Ah, but the real surprise is that your card details are not only on file with Bargain.com but with several hundred other sites with ads on Google. AND when you send an e mail mentioning surfing, you get twenty ads alongside your e mail telling you that they have spiffy surfboards at half the price you paid at bargain.com. As you look down the list of vendors, you also find new places to surf, hotels to stay at and places to eat especially for surfers. How did Google know you surfed? You haven’t even discussed it with your mother.
You go to another site to look up books on calligraphy and when you start to type in your contact details to purchase the book you want, you discover that somehow, this omniscient site recognizes you as soon as you type the first letter of your name. How did that happen? You were never interested in calligraphy until an hour ago.
“There are hundreds of web-based email services that appear to offer anonymity. Few really do. These include names such as Hotmail, Yahoo, Excite and many more that could be listed. In each of these cases, the user is allowed to create a personal username that he uses for his messages. Unfortunately, through sign-up procedures and logging, it is amazingly simple to determine your ISP, and even your true identity, when you use these services,” says A. Brown on www.e/cheat.com.
At first, all this seems to heighten the convenience of shopping or searching on line. We tend to forget that ordinary people are entitled to privacy. Refusing to reveal the amount of money we have, where it is deposited and the special interests we have unpublished does not make us terrorists. (Although the way this information is bandied about certainly does make us terrorized.)
Mike Butcher explains this practice of real time web disclosure: “The idea behind a real-time Web is to create technology that doesn’t require an Internet user to actively seek out something they’re interested in. That could mean anything from getting pinged when an article about your favourite sports team is posted to an alert when you’re mentioned in someone’s blog.”
There is something decidedly uncomfortable about the world knowing you like surfing or are interested in pursuing calligraphy…but it is a lot MORE disturbing if your partner finds out you have just joined e harmony to see if someone more exciting awaits or that you like to watch porn while he is selling computers at Frye’s. That is all YOUR business,…or is it?
A Brown has more to say on the subject: “There are more reasons to want to protect your privacy than can be named. The important principal is that you have a right to privacy as long as that right is used within the bounds of the law. Seeking privacy should not make you feel guilty. Privacy should be expected, and demanded. The reasons might be as simple as preserving your right to express unpopular opinions without being subjected to persecution, or as serious as communicating sensitive business information, revealing credit card numbers, legal discussions with your accountant, or hiding your true identity from a secret government. Regardless of your reasons, privacy is your right. Contrary to what some governing bodies might want the public to believe, not all those concerned with security and privacy are hackers or terrorists.”
The fact that A Brown is just another computer user who has made these observations on a non-technical site is even more unsettling. The “experts” in computer technology probably know how to find out your eating habits, your sex addictions and your regularity….Why do they care? Perhaps it is to use the information to tempt you to buy a product. It could be to garner statistics on the potential success of a new product. Or it could be to harass you and accuse you of something they think you might do…such as drug dealing or behaviour that “disturbs the peace.”
Facebook says, ‘Privacy is theft,’ because they’re selling
your lack of privacy to the advertisers who might show up one day
Jaron Lanier
