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I’m a public private person
Posted on June 9th, 2006 by uruloki
Sometimes I wonder as to exactly how much information is out there on me…
New Scientist has discovered that Pentagon’s National Security Agency, which specialises in eavesdropping and code-breaking, is funding research into the mass harvesting of the information that people post about themselves on social networks. And it could harness advances in internet technology – specifically the forthcoming “semantic web” championed by the web standards organisation W3C – to combine data from social networking websites with details such as banking, retail and property records, allowing the NSA to build extensive, all-embracing personal profiles of individuals.
While I am very careful as to the amount of personal information that I give out on the web, especially on a daily basis, a lot of people aren’t. I think I’ve limited the available information to my marital status and a very general geographical location and the type of car that I drive. Oh wait, my employer, where I bank, what I like to do… Heh. Just by commenting on certain things, I leave breadcrumbs that more and more powerful computers and algorithms will be able to piece together into a picture of who I really am.
Maybe I should just shut this down and turn it into a pr0n site. Night elf porn FTW, oh yeah…
What? No 1984 reference? It seemed so perfect too.
Big Brother is watching? Well, maybe we should put on a show…