Friday, February 21, 2003

CASPIAN - Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering Supermarket loyalty cards are quickly becoming a cause celebre in privacy circles. Some consumers have always objected to the idea that you needed to surrender personal information to receive a lower price than on-card holders. I have mixed feelings about that. What does raise the hackles is the potential such cards offer for abuse. This story confirms my suspicions. [...] one of my jobs was to wow potential customers. I had to take them through my data center and development labs and show them our stuff. The usual suspects were there - various marketers and database mongers. But the most interesting were the reps from the insurance companies. we had a BUNCH of 'em." The reason they were interested is that they wanted to collect lifestyle information on people so that individuals can be charged according to their lifestyles. "We see that you eat too much red meat so your life insurance will be higher than the norm". "We see that you've bought a lot of electrical supplies which means you're doing unauthorized electrical work on your house. Therefore we're canceling your homeowners policy." that kind of stuff. Believe it. Insurers, HMOs and their ilk would kill to have this data about your lifestyle and health. But for those of you whose fears have been assuaged by assurances that the relevant industries have no intention of using the data in such a manner, the author of this article says... Once stored in a database, data has a nasty habit of not ever going away so even if they don't do something in the near future, all this data is out there just waiting to be exploited. This is the crux of the problem and it's rarely, if ever, mentioned in privacy debates. 6:23:32 PM    Oh yeah? [] Hackers Run Wild and Free on AOL As this Wired story illustrates, there is no security technology that exists, or ever will, that can overcome the stupidity of the average user. Hackers gained access to an internal AOL server not through complex or sophisticated means but by "social engineering". Once inside a corporate LAN, nothing can prevent further damage. 6:07:23 PM    Oh yeah? []