Re: web tracks
Phil Agre (pagre who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu)
Mon, 8 Jul 1996 06:58:59 -0700 (PDT)
Just a clarification on Peter Smagorinsky's message. At least so far, a
Web site that you visit does not know who you are, or your e-mail address,
or any demographic information about you besides (sometimes) a vague
geographic category and what your domain is (e.g., weber.ucsd.edu).
It *might* know what other sites you have been visiting (again, without
knowing your identity). CDT, an industry-funded "public-interest" group,
is framing this issue in a slightly misleading fashion by promoting an
"anonymizer" for an interaction that is already effectively anonymous.
I'm a fire-breathing privacy activist, but I think that the current
system is almost ideal. What you *want* is to be able to interact with
foreign sites, transmitting the information that's functionally necessary
to get that work done, without disclosing your identity, and that's what
we have now. Whether that will change is another matter, but note that
Web browsers are not integrated (yet) into operating systems: the Web
browser itself does not necessarily know who you are. That will change
by next year, but the privacy principle can be preserved if people want
it badly enough.
Phil Agre