Mike Schorah

Maybe you missed the special edition of the Wall Street Journal  entitled 'What they know' - Here's the link They highlighted one of the fastest growing internet businesses, tracking consumer actions online They showed that Dictionary.com typically stores more than 200 tracking files when you visit Debate: Why tracking isn't bad - consumers get as much as they give Debate: Dangerous web tracking threatens the very notion of privacy And too much else crammed on to this one page to highlight here. Browse around this great resource acting as a mini-portal to one of the most contentious subjects to dominate current affairs. Get more like this

A great Tweet from @SheldonW this morning prompted today's blog post: SheldonW   Sheldon Witney     by MikeSchorah So much anxiety over the information companies hold about us these days. Do people really analyse WHY this makes them nervous? He said, SheldonW   Sheldon Witney   No one complained about the phone directory, which afaik gave tel, address, name, etc. Do people just assume it's bad? and SheldonW   Sheldon Witney   I think there are some real reasons, like changing people's behaviour, which isn't always good. But interested to know other peoples reasons Chris Byrne responded CRByrne   Chris Byrne   @   @ SheldonW  I believe the press in this country plays a significant part. They love to scaremonger. A stereotype is easier to prove. I think Chris is  right that there's some scare mongering going on, a drive to sell papers. And I completely agree with Sheldon's reminder about phone books. They still publish n...

Yesterday, The Guardian   reported that Germany has demanded that Facebook cease the automatic tagging of users in photos uploaded to the site or face a fine of €300,000. (That's hardly a sum that will register on Facebook's balance sheet, but that's a separate point.) The German concern relates to the automatic calculation of biometric facial profiles and Facebook's technology means that they can still calculate and store those profiles, even for users who choose to opt out of public display of this feature that's currently automatic. Why the concern? Simply because this week researchers at Carnegie Mellon university have reported their ability to combine image scanning, cloud computing and public profiles from social network sites to identify individuals in the offline world. And to link profiles of people at online dating sites with their real name information. They simply used off-the-shelf facial recognition technology (similar to that purchased by Google ...

"Companies and government agencies are getting raped and pillaged every day. They are losing economic advantage and national secrets to unscrupulous competitors" More than 72 organizations, including governments and the United Nations, are known to have suffered long-term cyber attacks . Some for more than five years. And this week it's emerged that personal information belonging to people entering newspaper competitions at The Sun  have been hacked . "What is happening to all this data ... is still largely an open question. However, if even a fraction of it is used to build better competing products or beat a competitor at a key negotiation (due to having stolen the other team's playbook), the loss represents a massive economic threat." There are obvious costs and risks at a geo-political or large company level; but for an individual consumer or small business the impact can be just as devastating. Several people I know have had their Twitter account h...

Gosh, does LinkedIn's CEO really not think people would question his motives in claiming that no one has time to add Google+ to their social network use? Does he really imagine that the triumvirate of Twitter, Facebook and - unsurprisingly - LinkedIn can't be toppled? Does he not remember Visicalc supplanted by Lotus 1-2-3? Or the way in which 1-2-3 and WordPerfect were blasted into oblivion by Excel and Word? Or the death of MySpace? Isn't it just a bit obvious that LinkedIn is threatened by Google+? Anecdotally, I'm seeing a few of the people I follow on Twitter declaring that they are abandoning Facebook for Google+; and I overhead a couple of excited conversations by people who noticed that they could create a Google+ "circle" with just one member, giving them the equivalent of a Twitter Direct Message. It's entirely possible that Google+ will supplant some of the more currently established networks, and I don't think LinkedIn is entirely safe,...

This weekend's light reading was Cory Doctorow's Little Brother . You can download it free of charge. It's an interesting book which Doctorow summarizes: Marcus, a.k.a “w1n5t0n,” is only seventeen years old, but he figures he already knows how the system works–and how to work the system. Smart, fast, and wise to the ways of the networked world, he has no trouble outwitting his high school’s intrusive but clumsy surveillance systems. But his whole world changes when he and his friends find themselves caught in the aftermath of a major terrorist attack on San Francisco. In the wrong place at the wrong time, Marcus and his crew are apprehended by the Department of Homeland Security and whisked away to a secret prison where they’re mercilessly interrogated for days. When the DHS finally releases them, Marcus discovers that his city has become a police state where every citizen is treated like a potential terrorist. He knows that no one will believe his story, which leaves...

A throwaway comment in yesterday's post needs further explanation: I wrote, " we can be pretty much uniquely identified by our browser settings, our search history, or the computer hardware and IP address combinations that we use " Firstly, part of the rationale behind Gmail and Google's purchase of YouTube and Blogger and other services, now also Google+, is to get us to login - and stay logged in - as we surf the web and use our browser. That way our interests can be matched to our identity to learn what we might buy if it's advertised to us. Facebook, too, has that nice, convenient "Keep me logged in" checkbox that's 'On' by default. Part of their strategy to get other sites to offer a connect with Facebook option, or to allow people to login using their Facebook id, is to capture an ever more rich picture of what users do on the Internet when they're not  on the Facebook home site. However, it's not even necessary for users ...