[privacy] The Internet Anonymity Experiment

[Paul Ferguson]

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Via PopSci.com.

[snip]

In 2006, David Holtzman decided to do an experiment. Holtzman, a security
consultant and former intelligence analyst, was working on a book about
privacy, and he wanted to see how much he could find out about himself from
sources available to any tenacious stalker.

So he did background checks. He pulled his credit file. He looked at
Amazon.com transactions and his credit-card and telephone bills. He got his
DNA analyzed and kept a log of all the people he called and e-mailed, along
with the Web sites he visited. When he put the information together, he was
able to discover so much about himself—from detailed financial
information to the fact that he was circumcised—that his publisher,
concerned about his privacy, didn’t let him include it all in the book.

I’m no intelligence analyst, but stories like Holtzman’s freak me out.

[snip]

More:
http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2008-02/anonymity-experiment

- - ferg

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--
"Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson
 Engineering Architecture for the Internet
 fergdawg(at)netzero.net
 ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/