Power to the privacy advocates - or is it?

Jonathan Bowers, July 24th 2007, 4:52PM

We should all be pleased that the five big search engines have now shown a commitment to reducing the length of time that they retain potentially sensitive data about their users. Microsoft and Yahoo! announced their intentions this week, which means that Microsoft and Google have publicly agreed to keep user data for no longer than 18 months, Yahoo! and AOL for 13 months and Ask.com is unveiling a new tool that allows users to block the retention of specific search terms and their computer's IP address.

Does this suggest that for the serious privacy advocate there's really only one search engine of choice? After all, ask.com appears to be going way beyond the other four and has prompted Microsoft to pledge similar functionality in its search engine by the end of the year. However, if you're a privacy advocate who is also serious about search results then will it be enough to make you, as a Google user, switch engine?

For many, this is a great step forward but I am not sure that it is enough to encourage a sizeable volume of searchers away from Google (with its 75%+ share of the UK search market) and prompt the search leader to take similar steps.

Tags: privacy, search
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The magic numbers

Chris Norton, May 26th 2006, 10:45AM

The rise of the machines continues apace, and it behoves us, puny mortals that we are, to race into a mechanistic state to avoid being crushed under their metallic robo-feet. On a rare trip into the dragon's den of R&D, June, our head of accounts, was talking to me of this syndrome of robotisation - namely how we all have to memorise vast chunks of numerical data. Credit cards, alarm codes, PIN and mobile numbers rattle around our heads until we're practically thinking in binary.

Which is all well and good for those of us who have Derren Brown style mental powers - but as June pointed out, what happens when you've got a less-than-perfect memory? I think I can dredge up quite a few important numbers purely from memory, but I also remember fraught times at cashpoints when all the digits got mixed up and I ended up freezing my card, or setting off house alarms. Numbers - they're just so abstract and hard to remember.

Of course there is an alternative, which we see all the time using computers - passwords. Every so often you hear statistics about the majority of passwords being 'secret' or 'password'. As is often the case with this blog, I'm starting to wonder what people's passwords say about them. Sadly I can't really conduct a poll of the office, all I can analyse are my own passwords. My policy is to go for phrases, words and collections of numbers completely unrelated in anything but the most tenuous way to myself and my interests...

... which kind of makes them abstract and hard to remember. Perhaps I should swallow my Orwellian terror of ID cards and biometric scanning and just relax in the knowledge that soon my fingerprints will get me into my house OK. Unless, of course, a Terminator turns up and steals my fingers.

Tags: bigbrother, passwords, privacy, security
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What we do on the web echoes in eternity

Chris Norton, May 5th 2006, 10:12AM

Lately I've been spreading myself all over the internet, in the same way as Jonathan Ross is spread across the TV and radio - admittedly without the wit, fame or eyeball-worrying collection of clothes. As I've said in previous entries, I'm a big fan of sites like 43things and last.fm, which are busy either recording what I do automatically or encouraging me to post information up about myself.

This phenomenon of online-ifying your personal life is really gathering speed, and I find myself worrying a little about the persistence of this information. Whilst I'm getting sick to death of myspace related stories, this one highlights the issue nicely. For a while back there it looked like El Murdocho owned your info for ever if you posted anything up - seems this has been resolved to something more satisfactory, but the fact of the matter is that information on the web stays there.

Myspace may crumble and take all those ridiculous abuses of CSS with it, lastfm may forget how many times I've listened to Dumb Dumb Dumb by Teenage Fanclub - and yet for years, perhaps for ever, archives will remain. Stuff on the web is publicly available information, and people like the Internet Archive (and Google's infamous cache) are filing it all away. Yes, future employers may be able to see those pictures on Flickr of you getting drunk and that rant about authority you posted on your blog. Even I (yes, even I) am a little worried that, if, say, I post a link to chucknorrisfacts.com - sometime in the future someone will be searching for me and, not being aware that Chris in tech told me to post it, might think I'm the sort of joker who spends all day on chucknorrisfacts.com. And I'm not.

My advice? Get up while you can and delete yourself! OK, so I've had no success in implementing this noble aim myself - because those sites are just too cool. Maybe that's the problem - cool vs privacy, fun in the present vs paying for it in the future. God, thinking like that, seems like I'm getting old.

Tags: blogging, myspace, privacy, websites, worldwideweb
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Thought Police here we come

Chris Norton, April 27th 2006, 10:36AM

Behind Winston's back the voice from the telescreen was still babbling away about pig-iron and the overfulfilment of the Ninth Three-Year Plan. The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it, moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time.

Fair play to Mr Orwell, he was pretty much spot on with the old telescreen concept. Good job he wrote 1984 - whilst there's precious little reason for me to quote his other books about pot plants and being a tramp, it's de rigeur for every person writing about tech to mention the original Big Bro at some point.

So telescreens are one step closer - and it's Apple, who have famously flirted with a bit of 1984 imagery, who are developing it. The screen that watches you as you watch it - it'll make video chats a lot more natural, and it's undoubtedly exciting tech - but whereas you can turn off a webcam or even cover it up to make sure nobody catches you picking your nose or plotting the downfall of the government, how will we ever be sure that our screen isn't sneaking a peek at us?

Tags: apple, bigbrother, privacy, video
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