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So who's gonna know?
Now you're worried that your every online move is watched by some marketing honcho -- or worse. In fact, you're not just worried, you know there's information about you in unsecured places, and it's for sale. Granted, this information probably doesn't include your real secrets. In fact, it's probably limited to dry facts and figures. But still, it feels kind of creepy. Sort of like X Files run amok. Relief may be on the way. U.S. Rep. Bruce Vento (D-MN) recently introduced a bill that would require prior written consent before a computer service can disclose personal information to a third party. But whether or not the bill or something like it passes, you might want to know what exactly is out there about you and who can get their hands on it. Should you even care? If you do, what kind of damage control can you employ? It depends. For example, do you use e-mail only to chat about the local weather with your Aunt Delma in Poughkeepsie, or are you carelessly using e-mail at work to gossip about the boss? Maybe you've been passing insider trading tips to your brother-in-law in Singapore, or wandering around the sleazier back alleys of the Web instead of crunching numbers for that report? Most of the time it just doesn't matter if some bored teenage hacker in a garage somewhere reads your private correspondence or finds out that you frequent pet-care sites. Besides, it's highly unlikely that would ever happen. On the other hand, corporate management does monitor computer communications in more and more workplace environments every day. As long as your only crime is expressing feelings to a co-worker, it may be time to use encryption software. Of course, this type of sensitive communication should really be confined to your home computer and personal Internet account in the first place. You're cruising for a bruising by being indiscreet on the job. But even from home, your e-mail and file transfers are up for grabs whenever someone working for your Internet Service Provider has a bad-hair day. And what about those horror stories you hear about on TV? You know, the nightmare of getting huge credit-card bills and a trashed credit rating because someone has stolen your identity. How? By randomly lifting your social-security number and address off the Net to issue themselves bogus plastic money. Fortunately, this is pretty rare. It can and does happen, though. So stick around, close the blinds, and learn what you can do.
-- Marieke Boer and Mike Britten, who is a professional software
developer with more than 15 years of experience in database management
systems. Recently, he has focused on researching and writing about software
tools for programmers.
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