Rantings on privacy

Dontcha hate it when people collect all sorts of information on who you are and what you do for who-knows-what-purpose? Let's take an example, for instance. Lots of the local supermarkets have started using 'coupon cards' echoing the goings-on in Europe for the last few years. Now, I enjoy saving money as much as the next person, but it seems awfully strange that they'd be trying to save me money by introducing this huge infrastructure into their own system, wouldn't you think?

But wait! Seems to me that in order to get one of these cool little 'coupon-clipping-saving' cards,' you need to fill out a form telling them who you are, where you live, etc. Hmm. So, every time I go and buy my groceries, these guys get to associate my purchases with me, so that they can track what I like to buy (and assumably, like to eat?)

Don't even get me started about the possible uses for this information. (Hmm, this guy likes lots of cholesterol-laden foods and smokes cigarettes. I wonder who might be interested in knowing about his life expectancy?)

Of course, this is all farfetched (and probably a bit paranoid-sounding), but it just bugs me, and that's what this page is for, right?

Now, lets extend for a second, and think about what happens on the web. For most people what happens when you go from link to link, surfing around, is kind of a 'black box' procedure...it's not immediately clear what's going on. But, you're actually leaving a fair trail behind, that someone could theoretically capitalize on. For kind of a neat demonstration of what I'm talking about, and a much more detailed description of what goes on behind the scenes when you're browsing the web, you might want to go here:

http://www.13x.com/cgi-bin/cdt/snoop.pl

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