[privacy] The Internet Anonymity Experiment

[security curmudgeon]

: 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 don't see a "tenacious stalker" getting all of that though. Think about 
what it takes to get each thing listed above, the money involved, what 
systems you'd have to break into and gain full control over, etc.