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Written by Tony Phelps
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Thursday, 17 November 2005 |
One of the proclaimed benefits of the internet is its anonymity – the
ability to look for information on any topic from the privacy of a
computer, without being seen or having to show any identity. Alas, this
is rarely true any more.
In an increasingly electronic world, constantly under threat from
viruses, worms, hackers, criminals and misfits, and with the growing
power of computers to process incredible amounts of data, internet
users are being watched. Constantly. For every little thing they do.
Each click of the mouse, each press of the Enter key, anything that
interacts with the internet, can be logged, analysed and reported.
From the second a home computer dials in to TVL, they know who has
connected & what time. They can record what emails were sent &
received, and how big they were. They can log which websites were
visited, what pictures were looked at, and how long was spent doing it.
And that’s just the local Internet Provider. The suppliers of the
international internet links do the same. And so does each and every
organization between the computer and the internet website. And of
course, the website itself is recording what page was first visited,
and the path of links that was then followed.
Most of this recording is for good reasons ;
- performance monitoring, to make sure that internet connections
and their equipment are fast enough (or acceptably slow, depending on
the attitude)
- performance enhancement, to speed things up by putting data closer to the requester
- marketing, to make sure that the website puts the most popular
stuff at the first point of contact, and to make it easy to find stuff
- billing, to charge only for what was actually used instead of a higher flat fee
- security, to prevent unauthorised use of resources
- legal compliance, to be able to enforce anti-terrorism, anti-pornography laws etc.
Even so, it’s worth bearing in mind that Big Brada i watsem Yu! From
the other side of the world, internet users can be traced all the way
back to their computer. Hollywood isn’t so far away from reality this
time. |
