Some thoughts, on Privacy & the Web.

One of the first things that ever brought me to the web, personally, was the thought that I was anonymous, and that I had all the privacy that I needed.

Boy, was I wrong.

The more that I learned about how all of this works, the more I realized that everything you do, everything you say, it’s all stored in what are known as Log Files

What could we use this information for? The list is pretty much endless, but most sites use it for marketing purposes. They track your surfing habits, find out the kinds of girls that you look at at your favorite porn site, and try and figure out how to get money out of you. Visa, it’s everwhere you want it to be…

What could I use this information for? Well..the short list goes as such…

• I could do reverse DNS lookups on your IP address and find out who your ISP is.
• Using this, I could most likely figure out who you are.
• I could then sell your information (phone number included) to some annoying tele-marketing company.
• I could do anything that I wanted with it, I just cannot think of anything right now…

The question is though, is not what could I do with it, but what DO I do with it. Nothing. Nada. I prune the file when it gets too big. Erase it and start over. That’s about it.

Any of the forms that you fill out (guest book, bug submission, contact), will simply submit information to a script on my server (not someone else’s where it will be dissected) and used for simple purposes. Like telling me where I screwed up, or telling me what I did right. Or, just something as simple as saying hi, and leaving a message.

I’m not everyone though. I probably have one of the only servers out there where the logs files aren’t dissected by a marketing team somewhere, in order to figure out what your surfing habits are, and how to best serve up a banner add courtesy of doubleclick.net.

Think of this not so much as me warning you what I am going to do with your information, as it is me warning you of what others could do.

You are NOT anonymous. You are NOT unseen. You ARE a demographic. And, most likely, a part of a demographic that has money. You are NONE of that to me though, I really don’t care who you are, or why you are reading this.