> You teach *little kids* not to give out personal info to cold
> calls over the phone. You can teach overgizmo'd proles too.
Well, that's easily said, but not so easily done. Little kid
Joe gets a Unix school account. He sees that you can put some
info in your finger sig, so he puts his phone number.
He thinks it's a good idea because he sees this as a good way
for fellow class mates to get in touch with him.
Joe then goes and surfs the Web, little Joe has no idea that
when he goes to foo.com, foo.com logs his e-mail adress, IP
and other stuff. Then foo.com collaborates with BigBrother.com
who associates little Joe's phone number to his e-mail adress by
quering his finger.
Need another example? There are plenty.
In real life, when little Joe goes to a grocery store, if the
clerk asks him for his phone number, we won't give it (because
his parents taught him well). When someone calls him on the
phone and asks for some personal information, we won't give it.
When he is surfing the Web he simply has no idea someone is
traking him and accumulating info about him.
Say little Joe becomes big Joe. Big Joe is affraid he might have
cancer, so he go surfs some Web page that talk about the subject.
A week latter, big Joe is searching for a job. The employers
for the job he is applying for do a quick search on his web habbits,
they found out that he might have cancer, so he doesn't make a
good candidate. And that's just beside the fact that he surfed
at www.sex.com, so the employers think that Joe is a pervert and don't
want anything to do with him.
How many people do you think are aware of all this tracking?
How many people do you think know that every message posted do a news
group is archieved, forever? There to shadow there futur.
The bad thing about servers collecting information about you is that
they don't do it directly, they do it with out you beeing aware
of it. I don't think it's hard for you to realize that users don't
have to directly fill out info in a web site for Big Brother to be able
to build a profile on them.
Anton
