Friday, August 28, 2009

Giving Yourself Away on the Web


Everybody is on Facebook these days. I was asked so many times I finally joined. Yet, I don't have time to check it often. Usually I only log in when someone leaves me a message.

Now that I came back from Buenos Aires, I changed most of my passwords. I am not sure this does much good, but at least I feel I am doing something. Having a Mac also helps me feel somewhat more secure.

The sad thing is that the web is a giant history book that is tracking everything we do. I have nothing to hide, but it still feels creepy to think that a detailed record of my life is traveling all over cyberspace.

--
New York Times
Editorial Notebook
Published: August 27, 2009

Internet users used to comfort themselves by thinking that to become victims of the pirates of the Web, they had to frequent the online porn circuit or respond to an e-mail from the widowed wife of the former central bank governor of Nigeria. The idea was that one had to do something naughty to get caught in the wrongdoers’ net, or at least go for a late-night stroll in the rough end of town.

But the conceit has become untenable. Two years ago, engineers at Google reported that about 10 percent of millions of Web pages they analyzed engaged in “drive-by downloads” of malware. Google today has about 330,000 Web sites listed as malicious, up from about 150,000 a year ago...link to complete NYT editorial

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