I read this article on CNET. Google Plus has been around for months, now. I keep hearing about how fantastic it is, but most of us who clicked the ‘Keep Me Posted’ button or received invitations can’t join because they’ve ‘temporarily exceeded maximum capacity’ almost since the service began. I’m not sure that most of the famous bloggers/tech-heads who were invited to field-trial membership are not aware that most people simply never got the invite or weren’t allowed to fulfill an invitation. And while the president of Google may not be posting publicly, unless we’re in his circle, maybe we’ll never know whether he’s one of the 40% who have stopped posting publicly altogether, preferring to publish exclusively to specified circles. Continue reading “Google Plus – The Rollout”
Internet ID’s – More trouble than they’re worth
PopSci’s point and counterpoint articles on internet IDs brings up once again the concept of an international identification system that ties a person with a number. Would it be tied to our social security numbers? Our passports? Our banking? To my mind, this is just another bitcoin fiasco in the making, except now it’s not just one digital wallet or a bank, it’s my entire credentials – online or otherwise.
We want the protection benign government affords without the abuse corrupt government bestows. Unfortunately, abuse can happen at any level. An international id code will lead more to abuse of privacy than anything else. Marketers already abuse our IP address information, often skating on the edge of legal, moral and ethical values because the money involved is too tempting to do otherwise.
We can just barely address civil and criminal issues in the physical world. Are we really ready to internationalize legal/civil/criminal issues with something as abstract and nebulous as the internet? I don’t think we’re there yet.
Image credit: PopSci.com
Can the FTC really stop tracking?
The Federal Trade Commission is proposing ‘Do Not Track’ legislation similar to the ‘Do Not Call’ legislation that attempted to stop cold callers in the United States. Some marketing firms are tracking your personal movements across multiple websites, regardless of what they say. When you get a telephone marketing call from a company just a few minutes after you land on their home page, it’s hard to pretend otherwise. Continue reading “Can the FTC really stop tracking?”
