rantlust

Posted by anupcs on August 31st 2005 in Internet, Technology
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A few years ago, Scott McNealy told a group of analysts and reporters: “You have zero privacy anyways, get over it” which sparked a still raging debate about one’s privacy on the Internet. The statement was made in 1999 and in the intervening years, identity theft has burgeoned and we all have got our fair share of phishing emails and the Nigerian bank scam (aka 4-1-9) letters. This week, I was intrigued by this article in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Since I was far away from computers for most of April, I missed the press hoopla about the site mentioned in the above article - Zaba Search - which aggregates all the public information about individuals and gives it away for free. A search for myself does reveal not only my current address but also some of the previous ones that I have lived in. That’s all it gives though; for more information you have to pay them a fee. I am not sure what information is given if you go for the paid search. The information in the free search is already available in sites such as Yahoo’s People Search.

Every time we fill out a form on the internet or apply for a credit card, we voluntarily give away a lot of information about us and we have only ourselves to blame for that. Even if you check the box which says, “do not share” in most of these forms, I am not convinced that these companies adhere strictly to the privacy laws. Moreover, with the popularity of social networking sites such as orkut (yuck), del.icio.us, flickr, stumbleupon, we are constantly giving more and more info about ourselves to the world by filling out personality traits, likes, dislikes, browsing habits, and the name of our pet newt. Someone with ample time on their hands and/or an ulterior (evil?) motive can find oodles of information about you on the Internet.

So, I am a bit surprised by the negative press about Zaba. They just made it slightly easier for people to do this. The connection of Zaba’s owners with the suicide cult Heaven’s Gate probably didn’t help much either. When they started, they even had links to satellite photos of your current domicile. They have since removed it. Apparently, you can opt out of being listed there but they require you to submit more personal info about yourself which doesn’t sound too good. Here are some worthwhile articles that I found after reading the Chronicle bit:

• The Wired Interview with the owners
• The original article on SF Chronicle about them
• Snopes.com
• CNET’s article