[IP] more on Data mining of Amazon wishlists
Begin forwarded message:
From: Kate <kate@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: January 8, 2006 3:16:35 PM EST
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [IP] Data mining of Amazon wishlists
Years ago, I was doing a presentation, to explain to corporate users
how easily people could find out information about them by searching
on @corporation.com to find corporate users who'd used the address
for personal pages, forums, archived discussion lists, and so forth.
This was years ago when corporations hadn't clamped down as much as
they do today, still uncertain whether to play hardball with
employees (and also when they economy was roaring, so they weren't
interested in being overly dictatorial.
We got talking about mistaken identities and I showed them that it
wasn't always safe to assume anything with just a name (or anything
else for that matter). At that point, I used the name of a friend
since everyone always got a kick out of the fact that, if you
searched on his name, you get everything from horse trainer to
priest. Doing that led me to his Amazon Wish list. (I bought him
something for the fun of it since, from the content and the address,
it was clear that this was who it was.)
I also immediately made sure my Wish List wasn't publicly viewable
any longer. I really don't wish to have strangers knowing my personal
taste in merchandise -- at least not then, and especially not given
the business I was in at the time.
Kate
"You know how it is, come for the animal porn,
stay for the cultural analysis." -- Michael Berube
Bitch | Lab
http://blog.pulpculture.org
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