Review of Lecture Eleven

Access
 

Ford, Delta--What will consequence be?

Tuesday's WSJ squib on possible consequences

E-Mail appliance

"Free" PC's

Constraints on content

Stanford study--Are Internetters lonelier?

Matching of various kinds
 

Dating sites

Matching engines

Web publishing--an effort in matching
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Privacy on the Web--An overview
 

Some examples of "unprivacy"

One company's response

Very short history

What should the various players do?

 ------------------------------------------------------------

Comet Cursor
 

•"... a little downloadable program that lets you

replace the dull old Windows arrow cursor

with an image of Kenny from South Park

or other cartoon characters."

•but Comet did not tell you that Kenny was telling Comet

"...what Web sites you visited and

what you did while there."

•in November, privacy advocates

told on Kenny and Comet

•others: Real Networks, AOL

[Wildstrom, Stephen H. On the Web, It's 1984, BusinessWeek,

10 Jan 00, 28]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Banks

•Selling customer information to telemarketing firms

•Data mining is the really big activity

To get customers to buy other products

Monitor customer activity

Banks didn't like it when feds proposed it

Software designed to help banks comply
 

with proposed federal regs

now being used for marketing

Bank of America is going to install this software

Monitoring credit card activity is another

part of the program

So are banks being helpful in making suggestions?

Or are they violating your privacy?

[Sanders, Edmund. Your Bank Wants to Know You, LA Times, 23 Dec 99, 1, 25]
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Some Health Care Web Sites Lack Privacy"

[Alissa J. Rubin, LA Times, 2 Feb 00, A3, A27]

•Report by California Healthcare Foundation

•HCWS claim that health info will not be shared
 

"... often it is picked up by companies

that advertise on Internet sites."

E.g., somebody logs on to find out about diabetes

and information about that person and the query can be sold

•17,000 Health Web sites

•"Of the about 110 million Internet users,

about 25 million have visited health Web sites."
---------------------------------------------------------------
DoubleClick

Double Click is an Internet advertising agency

•"Its computers insert banner ads and other
 

promotional messages on about 1,500 Web sites."

•Double Click uses cookies to collect information
 

to enable it to target customers.

•DC has about 100 million profiles.

    Until last Fall DC provided only anonymous data to marketers.
 

•Then DC put together the cookie information with

other information to associate names and addresses

with the cookie info. In November DC bought a data

warehouse company that had information on names

and addresses.

•So DC now knows what you do online, who you are,

where you live, and your phone number.

•On 27 January, Harriet Judnick filed suit against DC

[Green, Heather, Alster, Norm, Borrus, Amy, and Yang, Catherine.

Privacy: Outrage on the Web. Business Week, 14 Feb 00, 38-40]
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[DoubleClick's response]

How did we get into this situation?

The Village where everybody know everbody's business

The pre-computer era
 

Credit bureaus

JF's bank experience

The computer era
 

Big credit bureaus

Government matching

The internet era

 -----------------------------------------------------------------

So what can you do to protect yourself?
 

"use PGP or another strong encryption method

do not use your employer's computer system

for personal messages and messages

you do not want your employer to read, and

choose a service provider who contractually

gives on-line users strong privacy rights."

[The Legal Right to Privacy in Electronic Communication.

Timothy Stanley. The CPSR Newsletter, Fall 1995]

---------------------------------------------------------------------
 

What should the government do? Can we trust them?
 

Echelon

DMV information

CTS squib in Tuesday's NY Times

JF as a resource

E-Loan is another case

Marx Lecture--

Window into the Soul:

Surveillance and Society in an Age

of High Technology

29 Feb, 7PM, Crystal Cove