Interesting little article from http://pass.maths.org.uk/issue21/news/random_privacy/index.html:
Excerpt: How old are you? How much do you earn? What would you answer if asked asked these questions at website when you were buying your next TV or ordering groceries online? A lot of us would lie, and for a very good reason - to protect our privacy. But the companies posing these questions also think they have a good reason. Information about customer profiles is becoming increasingly important in business, both for marketing and for development and improvement of services. "Right now, the rate of falsification on Web surveys is extremely high," says Dr Ann Coavoukian, the commissioner of information and privacy in Ontario, U.S.A. "People are lying and vendors don't know what is false [or what is] accurate, so the information is useless." But researchers at IBM think they have the solution. They have developed an ingenious method to protect our privacy, while still giving companies the information they crave. [. . .] ------- .. Blanc
