Technological Implications for Privacy on the Web
My contribution to The
Tangled Web: Ethical Dilemmas of the Internet, a 1998 summer
Humanities Insitute and conference at Dartmouth College.
Slides [PPT] from conference presentation
Web Sites
Places and products to search for "personal" information, other than typical web search engines:
- Deja News (searching Usenet archives)
- pick someone that you know posts to Usenet, e.g., me
- search for their email address
- click on one of the articles
- click on Author Profile
- now you can see a list of all articles posted by that person
- Products from Intelligent Interactions,
i.e., web data-collection and marketing tools
- Infospace - look people up, get credit reports, etc
- I tried this one, paying $8 for my credit report.
I had to enter my name, birthday, current and previous address,
SSN, employer, 6 digits of some account number,
and one of my credit cards, before they let me have it online. It took about 5-10 minutes.
- Then I tried their "background check" for $139.95, giving only the subject's name and SSN,
and giving only my name and email address (and payment info). This took a bit longer.
Information about web privacy:
Media stories and commentary
Legislation in US Congress
Use Thomas to search the 105th Congress for bill numbers
- S.504 and H.R.1972: Childrens' Privacy Protection and Parental Empowerment Act of 1997
- S.600 and H.R.1813: Personal Information Privacy Act of 1997
- S.1368: Medical Information Privacy and Security Act
- H.R. 2281
(passed): WIPO treaty, which has a possible side effect of outlawing
the removal or blocking of cookies
And, Gore's July 1998 announcement about a new privacy initiative:
David Kotz
Last modified: Sat Aug 8 18:20:44 1998