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Tuesday, April 19, 2005 |
Amazon.com knows things about you that you may not know yourself. Though plenty of companies have detailed systems for tracking customer habits, critics and boosters alike say Amazon is the trailblazer, having collected information longer and used it more proactively. It even received a patent recently on technology aimed at tracking information about the people for whom its customers buy gifts.
Some privacy advocates believe Amazon is getting dangerously close to becoming Big Brother with your credit card number. "They are constantly finding new ways to exploit personal information," said Chris Hoofnagle of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, an Amazon nemesis since 2000 after the company changed its privacy policy to allow sharing of personal information with companies it buys or partners with. More recently, the Seattle-based virtual retailer has launched a Web search engine, called A9, that can remember everything you've ever searched for — and the site reserves the right to share that information with its retailing arm. Amazon also funds a Web site called 43 Things. It seeks to link people with similar goals, such as getting out of debt.
11:15:35 AM 
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Some lawmakers say that as online dating becomes more popular, users need better protection from predators. Twenty-six million people visited dating sites in January, according to the Internet research firm Nielsen/NetRatings. The Senate is considering legislation that would require an Internet dating company serving Michigan residents to disclose on its Web site whether it has conducted criminal background checks on users, based solely on the names provided. A provider also would have to disclose the limitations of background checks and urge members to adhere to safe dating practices. The legislation is backed by True.com, the only online dating service that performs criminal screening. Similar legislation has been proposed in five other states: California, Ohio, Virginia, Florida and Texas.
Critics — including most online sites — say any feeling of security would be deceptive because there is no way to ensure people give their real names. [Further] ... the measure blatantly favors True.com and argue that the free market should drive demand for background checks, not the government. [Good grief! How did we date (safely) before the Internet came along?]
10:05:34 AM
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Husbands and wives, moms and dads, even neighbors and friends increasingly are succumbing to the temptation to snoop, thanks to a growing array of inexpensive, easily accessible high-tech sleuthing tools once available only to professional investigators. And a growing amount of free personal information is so easy to find online that many Internet regulars don't think of it as spying. Plug a name into Google and you have an instant background check. Spying is so common that thousands of Web sites and dozens of retailers across the country now sell surveillance tools, and business has never been better, says Jason Woodside of the International Spy Shop in San Francisco.
BUT ... A Florida state appeals court judge, for example, ruled in February that spy software that a wife had installed on her husband's computer was illegal. Other cases in the headlines involve a Colorado Springs man who was arrested in February after he was accused of planting a GPS device in his wife's car to track her. And after a privacy outcry, an elementary school in Sutter, Calif., abandoned a plan that gave children mandatory radio-frequency ID badges so the school would know where they were at all times. [It seems inevitable that we eventually "turn the gun on ourselves".]
9:29:25 AM
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