Hi Rikona,
I worked for a payment gateway.. and was costantly having to adjust our apps
to handle blocking firewalls and stuff that end users have (and we did
NO tracking of our clients customers at all other then what was necessary
for security)
The problem is that we need to ensure that the user that started a
transaction is the same user that paid for it, and ended it and the one that
got the receipt.
By trying different stores with all your privacy info blank, and finding
one that worked, you are most likely picking the one that will end up
getting your card details posted on the net somewhere. (meaning the one with
the least security in place)
You are quiet right, for normal browsing you have (or should have) the right
to be nobody.
but for any sort of shopping, you are hurting youself more then anyone else
by blocking any means to make sure you are who you say you are.
Say for example, that you have just purchased something online and paid for
it.. you do all this while blocking all your auth data, and proxying your IP
address...
Then someone steals your session with the cart and enters their delivery
address.
They get the goods you paid for.
Thats a very basic example, but you can see how being able to get your IP,
referer and whatnot can make it much much harder for someone else to pretend
to be you. Its still possibly to spoof all that, but it is much more
complicated.
If you shopping as nobody, your very easy to copy aren't you???
rgds
Franki
-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of rikona
Sent: Monday, 9 June 2003 12:13 PM
To: Frankie
Subject: Re[2]: [newbie] Privacy in linux?
Hello Frankie,
Sunday, June 8, 2003, 7:08:01 PM, you wrote:
F privacy in browsering is cool..
And getting rarer with time. :-(((
F just keep in mind that you have no right to expect ecommerce apps to work
if
F you make all authentication methods non functional...
If I'm ordering something, I don't expect to be anonymous, of course,
but why do I have to be authenticated if I am just visiting a site?
Why would you force me to accept a cookie from someone who is trying
to track my every move on the net?
Why would I want to accept a script designed to snoop in my computer
as much as possible?
If I have trouble with a site, I'll go to another one. One usually
gets a few in Google. :-) If EVERY site I find is disfunctional, I'll
buy it locally if I can. If not, I'll call their 800 number and read
the item from the screen. If at all possible, I will NOT deal with an
intrusive merchant!
F We have precious little authentication methods available to us now.
F If people all start spoofing their details online then no-one can
F expect this stuff to work anymore.
Why not? Perhaps I am not understanding what you mean by
authentication.
F my point is turn it off when using online apps.
It would seem as though that is where it is needed most. Am I missing
something?
It seems as though the basis for placing ads is to track every move of
the user. A bit like someone following me around. I drive to a store,
they record the path I took to get there. When I get out of the car,
they follow me in the store. They record everything I look at in the
store, especially if I pick it up, and if I come back to look that
gets recorded too. If I buy something, the purchase is recorded. In
many cases the name, address, phone, email address are sent to the
advertiser to sell on some list for spammers.
Now if someone was doing that physically, would you not object and
consider it an invasion of privacy?
Please tell me why it is so hard to build an app that just lets me
visit and look around anonymously.
--
Thank you,
rikonamailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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