Thursday, 07. November 1996
Big Internet is Watching You
Over the past month or so, a mailing list I subscribe to has endured a flame war with a disgruntled (ex-)subscriber. A few days ago, an anonymous participant provided what I'll call an Internet Biography of the subscriber.
The anonymous message began with "I had some free time this morning, and just for fun, thought I'd create a brief Net profile of our friend ..." Among the discoveries are the following:
-- Home address and phone number from http://www.yahoo.com (Four11 people search)
-- Birthday from http://www.boutell.com/birthday.cgi/[Month]/[Day]
-- Company name and internet domain ownership from InterNIC.
-- An uncomplimentary "who is ..." from a private academic site.
-- A Usenet author profile showing over 500 messages posted to about 50 newsgroups over the last 18 months from http://www.dejanews.com profile.
-- An uncomplimentary note from an academic, private "legends" homepage.
-- Several professional contributions to FAQ's.
Over ten years ago, when computer bulletin boards appeared at my former employer, I formulated "Minow's law:" "never write anything you don't want to see on your resume." I seem to have been more prophetic than I expected.
Martin Minow, minow@apple.com [Martin Minow <minow@apple.com> via risks-digest Volume 18, Issue 59]
disLEXia, a research project by Maximillian Dornseif
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