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The Hundredth Window: Protecting Your Privacy and Security In the Age of the Internet - Softcover

Jennings, Charles

 
9780743254984: The Hundredth Window: Protecting Your Privacy and Security In the Age of the Internet
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0743254988 ISBN 13: 9780743254984
Verlag: Simon and Schuster, 2005

Inhaltsangabe

Privacy, whether we like it or not, has gone public. We are only just beginning to recognize how the Internet has redefined the relationship between our private lives and the public sphere. Every time we personalize a Web site, join a mailing list, or purchase a book or CD online, we open our lives to an ever-widening data network that offers us scant protection from the prying eyes of corporations, governments, insurance companies, or criminals. Has the e-commerce revolution permanently eroded all personal boundaries, or is it still possible to protect one's personal information in an increasingly wired world?
Charles Jennings and Lori Fena have devoted their careers to this question, most notably as the founders of TRUSTe, the leading privacy assurance and monitoring organization on the Internet. They have been instrumental in developing standards for judging how Web sites use and protect the personal information they collect, and they have advised numerous corporations who recognize that trust is the key to economic growth and expansion in the e-commerce world.
Security experts often say that if you put bars across ninety-nine of your windows but leave the hundredth window open, the invaders can still get in. For computer privacy, then, the question becomes, How can you best monitor that hundredth window? Jennings and Fena answer that question by providing a comprehensive guide to privacy and security in today's fast-moving online world, identifying winning and losing strategies for users and businesses alike. They argue that with so much information about us accessible through the Internet, we now need to think of privacy less as an inalienable right and more as a personal skill to be practiced and sharpened regularly. And for companies doing business on the Web, they demonstrate the critical importance of ensuring a private and secure environment for one's customers.
The Hundredth Window is also an invaluable source of useful information for every citizen of the World Wide Web. Jennings and Fena offer their readers:

  • An unsparingly honest assessment of how many popular Web sites handle privacy protection
  • Guidelines for evaluating a site's trustworthiness
  • Tips and tricks for protecting your private information while surfing online
  • Strategies to avoid being followed on the Internet
  • An advance look at likely new technologies that could put your privacy at risk

Far from predicting the death of privacy, Jennings and Fena provide the tools and the perspective that will enable us all to preserve our privacy as we enter the twenty-first century, enabling us to enjoy the many benefits that the Internet can offer.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Charles Jennings is the co-founder of TRUSTe and of the Internet firms Preview Systems, GeoTrust, and Supertracks. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter One: Invasion of the Data Snatchers
I fear the loss of my obscurity. Genuineness grows best in the dark.
-- Aldous Huxley
A generation or two ago, the data of daily life, to the extent that it was recorded at all, was "entered" on file cards and bond paper, stored in snap-ring binders and file cabinets, and kept under lock and key. Copying information required the use of carbon paper -- and considerable human effort. A real-time commercial transaction meant pulling cash from your wallet and collecting the change. The only identifying number the typical American had was a social security number -- a nine-digit code that was generally kept in strictest confidence, in accordance with the strong privacy guarantees of the initial social security program. Even as late as the 1960s, before computers were networked, the only individual transactions recorded on a daily basis were ones that involved financial credit, taxes, or governmental benefits.
Today, social security numbers are used everywhere, from schools to stock brokerages, to track you through life. Credit cards leave a wide trail of purchase records. Copying information is as easy as point and click, cut and paste. The data of daily life -- your daily life -- is collected at supermarkets, at the workplace, over phone networks, at the drugstore, and at every website you visit. And these are just the hot spots.
List marketers, credit profilers, information brokers, and other legal vendors make a business out of collecting and trading electronic data profiles of you. They participate actively in what amounts to a thriving online flea market for PII. It is your data -- personal facts about you -- that are being bought and sold. That's the best-case scenario. The worst case is that the information in your personal data profiles is not really about you, but accidentally about someone else. If that person has a criminal past, a poor credit history or a habit of posting hate messages on the Web, you are in for trouble.
There is so much electronic information collection going on in our lives that we have become quite accustomed -- even numb -- to it all. But recall your grandparents' lives for a moment, lives lived without direct mail, e-mail, or credit cards; lives lived in an era when personal behavior was at most a matter of local gossip, not a widely accessible public record. And then join us as we imagine a typical day in your thoroughly modern life.
7:00 a.m. Wake up, turn up heat, take shower, dry hair, make and drink coffee, use up remaining milk in refrigerator.
You can still wake up at home with some expectation of privacy. You know that your shower, at least, is private. Chances are no one is monitoring the simple tasks you perform in order to get ready for the day.
7:47 a.m. Log onto the Internet to check news and stock portfolio; check e-mail on personal account.
Now you have plunged into the data zone, where every move you make will be captured in a computerized system. Your identity travels the Net with you, leaving a solid, easily traceable trail. Every click of your mouse is being recorded somewhere far, far from your hard drive, and every transaction you complete will be stored and analyzed.
8:31 a.m. Turn down heat, open/close garage door, depart house.
The local utility may be specifically monitoring your heat consumption in order to run its systems more efficiently and to anticipate high-load periods. If you use an electronic garage door system, anyone with appropriate equipment can monitor its use -- from a distance -- to determine when you leave home, though this requires hard-core electronic surveillance. As you drive off from your house, your car's trip computer records the start of today's journey.
9:10 a.m. Drive into the city, use E-ZPass automatic toll payment to make commute faster.
In New York as well as many other major metropolitan areas, toll collection has become automated through systems such as E-ZPass. However, as this system speeds you through the toll booth, your car is being identified and information about your whereabouts is being collected and stored. New York City police detectives have successfully subpoenaed this information and used it as evidence in court. (Cars are moving billboards containing a critical piece of PII -- your license plate number.)
9:12 a.m. Answer cell phone in car regarding a hot new business deal.
At first the cell phone cuts out, of course, as you cross the bridge. But then you reconnect, perhaps aware that cell phone transmissions and receptions are recorded for billing purposes, but probably not caring in the least. But then you realize that cell phone calls can be intercepted. While that possibility is somewhat remote, you shudder at the thought that a business reporter might be lurking in the sea of traffic alongside you, ready to eavesdrop on your call. The thought passes, and you hit the speed dial to return the call.
9:30 a.m. Have breakfast meeting with prospective customer; pick up the bill with a credit card.
The credit card companies -- the banks as well as the payment processors -- are some of the biggest collectors of personal data about you. Plastic is often handier than cash, and sometimes it is essential, but it is never anonymous. Credit card data warehouse operators are expert at mining information about what you buy to better understand your behavior as a consumer. This can result in directing marketing efforts that target your likes and dislikes -- but this information is not in any way regulated, and nothing precludes it from being sold to whoever wants to buy it. The biggest privacy leak in most people's lives can be found in their wallets, where they keep their credit cards.
10:46 a.m. Go into office building, use electronic badge to enter parking area, building, restroom, and work area.
Electronic badges, like E-ZPass and cell phones, can locate you in a particular place at a particular time. So can the video cameras in the parking lot, elevator, and building lobby, all of which are now online in a closed-circuit network, with feeds to both a security control room and the executive suites. Ostensibly, this data is owned and held in confidence by your employer for security purposes only. But this data can be used for other purposes as well, such as in job reviews and employee disputes. Incidentally, alarm systems that require you to punch in a specific personal identification number, or PIN, to gain entrance also store a record of your coming and going.
11:10 a.m. Check/send e-mail from work account; log onto Internet to research the competition and gain access to analyst reports.
Not only are Internet access providers collecting information about your every online click, your employer may also be doing the same -- and legally it is within his or her rights to do so if you are using your system at work. So beware! (And please stay off those porno sites when you're at work -- it could be embarrassing when the boys in the server room check your log sheets.) Also, e-mail records have been used extensively in legal actions -- and have even bitten the grand titan of software, Bill Gates -- so understand that what you dash off in an electronic note lingers on, perhaps forever.
1:38 p.m. Go to Amazon.com to buy a book, and recommend it to a client's management team.
Amazon.com has established itself as the premier online vendor of books, in part by offering personalized service. This is accomplished by collecting information about your likes and dislikes regarding particular titles and comparing these with the likes and dislikes of the countless others who frequent their site. (The process is known as "collaborative filtering" and involves a set of cutting-edge technologies that are being used...

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Verlag
Simon and Schuster
Erscheinungsdatum
2005
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0743254988
ISBN 13 
9780743254984
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
308
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
preigu
mail@preigu.de

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