Using sitemeter, statcounter, google analytics is turning us into mini Big Brothers. Their popularity (you get to spy on your readers for free) is seriously changing the way we interact online. There might arise a loss of natural spontaneity and forthrightness with the knowledge of being watched. And web analytics is affecting us not just as people reading each other's blogs but in larger political and economic ways.
For example, we are allowing e-commerce companies to define the reason why the internet exists - not for the free flow of ideas and information but solely for selling their stuff. We are letting them set the agenda for the internet - when it should be us billions of individuals who should be doing it. Web analytics tells our web habits to companies like google - you can see how your blog is being accessed but google must be getting data about all blogs - their free google analytics only helps make their AdWords/AdSense more profitable. Why should we trust anyone wih our private information? Even the company whose motto is "Do no evil" has been doing a lot of shady things and compromising individuals to governments.
Wikipedia article on Web Analytics
This is a shocking short flash movie about how the harmless-looking social networking site facebook is actually collecting information about its users for the US government.
Careful: The FB-eye may be watching - Reading the wrong thing in public can get you in trouble.
Some very good links via Vishwas in the comments
Web analytics is just one of the ways we can be spied on. A way to protect at least our email privacy, as they suggest in the above links, would be encrypting all emails.
Public key cryptography seems to be the easiest and Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) a convenient implementation of this encryption/decryption technique.
This site says:
Cryptography is an exciting field!
It's time for crypto-illiterates like me to learn PGP.
Yes! Ubuntu has PGP, it is called pgpgpg:
sudo apt-get install pgpgpg
A very easy to read article 'PGP User's Guide, Volume I: Essential Topics' from Unversity of Hanover, Germany. 'PGP User's Guide, Volume II: Special Topics'
For example, we are allowing e-commerce companies to define the reason why the internet exists - not for the free flow of ideas and information but solely for selling their stuff. We are letting them set the agenda for the internet - when it should be us billions of individuals who should be doing it. Web analytics tells our web habits to companies like google - you can see how your blog is being accessed but google must be getting data about all blogs - their free google analytics only helps make their AdWords/AdSense more profitable. Why should we trust anyone wih our private information? Even the company whose motto is "Do no evil" has been doing a lot of shady things and compromising individuals to governments.
Wikipedia article on Web Analytics
This is a shocking short flash movie about how the harmless-looking social networking site facebook is actually collecting information about its users for the US government.
Careful: The FB-eye may be watching - Reading the wrong thing in public can get you in trouble.
Some very good links via Vishwas in the comments
Web analytics is just one of the ways we can be spied on. A way to protect at least our email privacy, as they suggest in the above links, would be encrypting all emails.
Public key cryptography seems to be the easiest and Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) a convenient implementation of this encryption/decryption technique.
This site says:
PGP is such an effective encryption tool that the U.S. government actually brought a lawsuit against Zimmerman for putting it in the public domain and hence making it available to enemies of the U.S. After a public outcry, the U.S. lawsuit was dropped, but it is still illegal to use PGP in many other countries.
It's time for crypto-illiterates like me to learn PGP.
Yes! Ubuntu has PGP, it is called pgpgpg:
sudo apt-get install pgpgpg
A very easy to read article 'PGP User's Guide, Volume I: Essential Topics' from Unversity of Hanover, Germany. 'PGP User's Guide, Volume II: Special Topics'
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