Well, as someone who's been online over twenty years and working in it
professionally for almost a decade, I would tell you the same thing about
internet security that I tell all my clients:

If it's something you really, REALLY don't want publically known, don't
send it over the net, period. No exceptions, 'buts' or 'I use encryption
software' excuses, either :)

You will be much further ahead if you simply assume that everything you
have *ever* sent online is archived somewhere. (because it is). Computers
are wonderful things, that way: Storage capacities are literally beyond the
capability of the average human mind to even comprehend, and getting
cheaper and cheaper all the time. Therefore, it's easy to save a record of
everything. The data is amazingly valuable, no matter what the content.

This year has seen a lot of my clients ask me to do a lot more data
analysis, in addition to the normal data gathering (via email and web).
Some of the data is pretty innocent. For example, if I had the time (and I
don't :) I could simply take all the emails that have come through this
list, strip everything but the message headers away from them to give me a
massive list of email addresses and headers. From that list, you can easily
parse those to find exactly how many of you are using:

a web-based email client
webtv access
free internet access or paid
geographic location of all addresses (down to city)
what email client you are using (Eudora, Outlook, etc)
probable ethnic origin of the sender (based on family name)

and a few other things I can't remember at 2:00 am.

What can you do with this data? It depends who is going to use it. If it
were the Angelman's Foundation, it could be used
*To get a more accurate idea of who's using what type of software and where.
*You can also get a general idea of the level of internet expertise the
user has [for example, the *general trend* (Emphasized, because this is
generalized across North America and not meant to insult anyone] more
advanced users tend to avoid ISP's like AOL, WebTv, Earthlink, etc)
*by knowing who'd using HTML-capable mailers, it could allow them to send
out more customized newsletters.
*They could personalize mailers per user (assuming they kept a databse with
all the specifics). Ex. In the next mailer that was mass-mailed to all of
us, what I see could be specific to parents of infant angels, but the next
person would see a version specific to teen angels, or a researcher could
see the entire mail as it applies to all angels, or even just as it applies
to geneticists)

There's a *lot* more you can do with the data. Obviously, some of it can be
quite bad, but if you're sending mail to this list, chances are you've done
other things online at least once, as well, which identifies you to the
world.

In this heavily computerized age, there really isn't a whole lot about
anyone that isn't available somehow, somewhere, via the internet. If
someone really, really REALLY wants that information, they're going to get
it. Period. (Not to mention the tons of off-line methods, as well)

Heck, you never know, we might see some of the *good* uses of this data
soon. I'm well on my way to learning databse manipulation and programming
(in addition to being an advanced Perl programmer) and have offered my
services free of charge to the Canadian Angelman's foundation.

For what it's worth, I like to think I live by an elevated ethical code.
I've never used any data that I think the owner of (i.e. the person the
data describes) didn't intend. I've turned down many clients that I knew
were into spamming from ill-begotten email lists. All of my coding projects
have had methods to remove people or their information from the records.

Data gathering is a GOOD thing :) Imagine where we'd be without the
*massive* amount of data, trends, reports, guesses, theories, etc, about
genetic disorders, today?

At 12:48 AM 6/13/00 EDT, KAYLEYWD@... wrote:

>YOu know, I was a little disturbed when I found out that all our emails are
>archived in Egroups. I don't really think they should be and this is a
>perfect example of why. I would really HATE for Kayla's teacher to read
some
>of the things I wrote about her. Now, granted, they are true things, but it
>could make my life *hell* if she read them! Well, she's leaving anyway, so
>it won't matter, but still...I don't think it's right.
>
>Dan, do we have any control over that?? Does anyone else feel the way I do
>about this?
>

----------------------------

Marc Bissonnette
InternAlysis
Intelligence In Internet Communications
http://www.internalysis.com