Thursday, November 06, 2008

You're no longer being followed

So, you think you are safe, and you are a Verizon home Internet user. If Verizon wanted to, they technically had the right until recently to watch and record your Internet usage - what sites you are visiting, what you are downloading, etc.

The article I've linked below points out that many people tend to overestimate how secure they are in terms of their Internet Service Providers. At least some of the ISPs have agreed that they should not be tracking their users without their consent. (Now, if they bury that on page 415 of their contract, I am sure they would consider that "consent", but that's a different story altogether)

The next target for the government should be some of the companies that track you via cookies. There are many programs (such as Lavasoft's Ad-Aware or Spybot Search and Destroy) that will get rid of the bad cookies...but if we take a step back, why should we have bad cookies on our machines at all? The problem is that the government is a few steps behind.

They seem to be catching up at least.

Web Links:

Thanks to Sue for the heads up!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

"I feel like somebody watching me." - Michael Jackson

Anonymous said...

Oh! It's "I feel like somebody's watching me" by Rockwell!!! .....darn younger generation with your youtube and limewire....