Since I enjoy the discussion of privacy, especially with regards to the internet, and have serious concerns about the number of large corporations which now track every single page view of internet users, this article by Daniel J. Solove regarding surveillance is really compelling.

It focuses on the claim of surveillance advocates, “If you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to fear.” (P.S. Thanks to Bruce Schneier for the link.)

The argument goes like » Continue reading “Witty retort to “I’ve got nothing to hide””

Ah. The Google Books fiasco. I’ve seen it in the news, have been quietly monitoring the situation, but I just read » Continue reading “Brin’s Foreshadowing of Google Books Privacy Policy”

Ignore the mouse ... and his two-letter domain name

Ever notice that when you sign into, oh, say, Gmail, you sign in at www.google.com? What’s up with that?

The reasons are technical, but it should be noted that when more and more traffic goes through the same domain name, you should wonder why.

Before I go off the nerd deep-end, if you don’t know what a URL is or the parts of a URL are, check out our new Wiki.

We are talking about the host portion (or domain name), of a web site. Specifically, » Continue reading “Tutorial on Top-Level-Domain Names, Cookies, and Privacy”

Not that it’s news, but I did some quick analysis of FeedBurner, since I figured out they were acquired by Google, like, two years ago.

The links that Google sends visitors to go through » Continue reading “FeedBurner redirects through google.com”

Google snapped up reCAPTCHA recently. I’m feeling worried. As well, I must have been in a news bubble there, but they also acquired FeedBurner, in, like, 2007. They just re-branded it recently, which is probably why I didn’t notice.

Now, I don’t put on the tinfoil hat very often, but Google keeps snapping up large wedges of the internet traffic pie. I’m getting more and more confident that Google wants to monitor all of your internet activities, all the time. Their goal, to provide the best targetted advertising, means they need to understand their users better. And » Continue reading “Is anyone worried that Google keeps grabbing more traffic?”

I had to write after reading this article in the New York Times. In short, Google “sees” 92 percent of online traffic for the top 100 internet sites. Other big boys, Atlas (60%), Omniture, and Quantcast (54% – I assume combined) don’t even get » Continue reading “Google sees 92% of “top” web traffic”

What part of "Do Not Email" do you not understand?

I used Monster three years ago, and they just don’t get it.

As a quick comment on the service, it’s the “shotgun” effect of » Continue reading “Monster should be burned at the stake for email practices”

We accumulate a lot of junk in life. And when I say we, I think I mean the “American People”, but what I really mean is: me.

My mother has perfected the art of accumulating things: She still resides in the house-I-grew-up-in (a 6 bedroom, 5 bathroom home) wherein each and every room is populated with » Continue reading “Being Safe with Craigslist Sales”

Score one for the users. Facebook changed their terms of service back to the pre-February-4th version.

Thanks to everyone who visited and participated in the discussion. It’s been quite a few days!

Yoink!

As I’ve become embroiled in the hulaballoo over Facebook’s Terms of Service changes on Sunday, there have been many discussions on Facebook (and off) concerning the concept of ownership.

Ownership, in the legal sense, related to “rights” over content. (Or Intellectual Property, in this case.) Photos, Images, Drawings, Music, anything you type into a web browser and submit.

» Continue reading “Facebook TOS “takes away” your ownership rights”