[ExI] inernet whiffenpoof, was: RE: Tracking your internet browsing

Mike Dougherty msd001 at gmail.com
Sat Oct 26 02:04:39 UTC 2013


On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 2:08 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:

> It should repeat the process about every three to five minute randomly
> chosen time intervals, around the clock.
>
> Wouldn't that scheme make it impossible to take someone's websearch history
> for use as an advertisement magnet?  What about the recent case where a web
> search history was used as evidence in court?  Could not some evil Tea
> Party
> candidate use website search history to discourage or defame a political
> opponent?
>
> This group is crawling with script gurus.  Someone help out the world here.
> My reward to you is my sincere best wishes forever or until I forget.
>

I don't think it matters enough to be worth the effort.

It isn't about the search history in your browser.  Your ISP is spying on
you.  They keep their own history.  Your shops are keeping their own
history.  Your government is keeping everyone's history.

Even simple narrow AI could examine the stream of data your script
(proposed, above) is generating and see the pattern over time.  Anything
searched/requested from outside that stream would be human-generated.  In
the case of allowing your friends to impersonate you, there is either
"guilty by association" or an outright violation of terms of service ("you
will keep your account/passwords secure")

I want to be more optimistic.  I'd like to believe that everyday people's
everyday data isn't incriminating.  I want to assume that a large enough
net catches everyone's weirdest interests and that my profile is simply
lost in the crowd.  However, I've worked with big [-enough] data to also
suspect that there aren't enough people/profiles on earth for the crowd to
be large enough to be lost among.
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