Dan Leone is the perfect example; he was a stadium operations manager for the Philadelphia Eagles, and in 2009 when he found out that his favorite Eagles’ player, Brian Dawkins, signed with the Denver Broncos he posted this on his Facebook page:
“Dan is [expletive] devastated about Dawkins signing with Denver … Dam Eagles R Retarted!!”
(By the way, the spelling errors are Leone’s not mine.)

The next day management found out about Dan’s comments and told him they were letting him go to “Denver or Oakland or maybe Pittsburgh.” But, they really didn’t care how he would get there because Dan was to be terminated immediately for his offensive remarks about the Eagles and people with mental disabilities.
Dan’s termination illustrates this decade’s newest form of corporate dismissals – Facebook firings.
There are people in my generation who think “What happens on Facebook stays on Facebook.” Someone actually told me this and I responded with, “It’s all fun and games – until someone gets fired.”

Art Eric Rodriguez is repeating “and the sky is blue” reminders and unfortunately people do need to be reminded that the “sky is blue”. And that things “are not fair”.

<snark>Zuckerberg would be very upset with Art Eric Rodriguez. After all, you should want to share, and share, and share!</snark>

My solution is very simple. I am very minimalist online. I don’t create content online. This is especially true on something like Facebook.

I am not about to put my career in the hands of the never-ending privacy policy changes coming from Facebook or any other website owner.

Look at the questions asked by Facebook:

• “I am interested in Males or Females” – sexual orientation are now freely available for employers to discriminate based on.
• “Political beliefs” – another area that Facebook encourages users to answer. Another question that employers are allowed to ask about but is now freely available to discriminate on.
• “Relationship status” – normally the single or married status of a job candidate is off-limits, but if it is publicly shared then it is impossible to prove employment discrimination based on marital status. Not married and living with your girlfriend/boyfriend? This is a problem with a large number of religious managers.

Most of the content that I create is on my blog, hosted on my server. When I say something online, if it is longer than a paragraph, then I just write a overview and a link to my blog. If I ever decide to delete the content, it is deleted.

Sure someone could go through the effort to copy my blog, but at least its a *manual* effort on their part.

In an age where google searches are easy, there are only a few defenses. The best one is to not post content on external sites. Quite simply anything written down can be held against you.

I find it incredibly revealing that the people who loudly proclaim that privacy is dead are well-off and able to financially deal with the impacts of private information being public.

Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, is a good example. But even he reacted strongly when his privacy was invaded. In 2005, Cnet reporters were banned access to Google.

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) – Google Inc. has blacklisted all CNET reporters for a year, after the popular technology news website published personal information of one of Google’s founders in a story about growing privacy concerns for the Internet search engine, according to a CNET statement.

CNET on Friday reported “Google representatives have instituted a policy of not talking with CNET News reporters until July 2006 in response to privacy issues raised by a previous story.” That story, by reporter Elinor Mills ran under the headline “Google balances privacy, reach.”

Google spokesman David Krane told CNN the company declined comment.

The CNET story, dated July 14, focused on privacy concerns since Google is amassing such enormous amounts of data about people. It reported that some analysts fear it is becoming a great risk to privacy, because it would be a tempting target for hackers, “zealous government investigators, or even a Google insider who falls short of the company’s ethics,” the article said.

To underscore its point about how much personal information is available, the CNET report published some personal information about Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt — his salary; his neighborhood, some of his hobbies and political donations — all obtained through Google searches.

Schmidt is officially Google’s chief champion and defender, and has publicly said that there has to be a trade-off between privacy concerns and functionality. He has brought up Google’s corporate motto, “Don’t Be Evil” in those defenses.

Five years later, Eric Schmidt seems little changed:

For those concerned with privacy, Google CEO Eric Schmidt gave them a few more things to start worrying about.

At a conference here Wednesday, Schmidt noted that using artificial intelligence, computers can take 14 pictures of anyone on the Internet and stand a good chance of identifying that person. Similarly, the data collected by location-based services can be used not only to show where someone is at, but to also predict with a lot of accuracy where they might be headed next.

“Pretty interesting,” Schmidt said. “Good idea, Bad idea?…The technology of course is neutral but society is not fundamentally ready.”

His comments came at the start of Techonomy, a new conference devoted to looking at how technology is changing and can change society.

Schmidt said that society really isn’t prepared for all of the changes being thrust upon it. “I think it’s time for people to get ready for it.”

Schmidt said these records are a challenge for everyone, himself included, as he noted he was a child of the 1960s.

On balance, Schmidt said that technology is good, but he said that the only way to manage the challenges is “much greater transparency and no anonymity.”

Schmidt said that in an era of asymmetric threats, “true anonymity is too dangerous.”

If this is so true, then why is Eric still sensitive about all his private information?

For me, I am help with a very common name including very famous people with an identical name. Google searching me turns up bad information. And that is just fine by me.

Update ( 18 March 2011): Brad Feld, a VC, seems to have rediscovered the value of privacy:

We were enjoying our sushi and talking about random things, like what our family restaurant was when we were growing up (Godfathers, Pizza Hut, Burger King were three of them) and where the smokers hung out at high school. Someone was mid-sentence when the manager of Japango walked up and asked if I was Brad Feld. I said yes; he handed me the landline phone and said “someone is on the phone with an urgent call for you.”

Everyone paused while he handed me the phone.

Me: “Hello?”

Them: In a voice that was clearly masked “Is this Brad Feld”

Me: “Yes, who is this?”

Them: “I wrrrr whrrr your rrrr.”

Me: “I’m sorry – I can’t understand you. What are you saying.”

Them “Brad Feld – I know whrrr you rrr.”

This went on for a few more exchanges. I figured out what the person was trying to say but I wasn’t really processing it so I kept asking what they wanted. Eventually I hung up. I explained to my friends what had just happened and we had a short conversation about checking in on Foursquare and I speculated that was what had prompted the call.

A few minutes later the manager came by, picked up the phone, and asked if everything was alright. I quickly told him the story – he was pretty perplexed and apologized for bothering us. A few minutes later he came back and said the person was on the phone again asking for me. I once again picked up the phone, this time with a little anxiety, but by the time I got on the line the person was gone.

Brad describes a repeated call and then concludes:

But yesterday’s call spooked me. I didn’t check in for the balance of the day. When I walked out of Japango, I was a little nervous about where I physically was for the first time I can remember while in Boulder. And I had a heightened awareness of my surroundings last night as I walked home.

I haven’t sorted this out yet, but as an early adopter – and a promiscuous one – of location-based checkin – I’m rethinking how I use this stuff and broadcast where I am. I expect this will be a much bigger issue in the future as humans become transmitters of their location (don’t believe me – just go read Daemon and Freedom.)

I guess it’s a good thing that this just happened and caused me to think harder about the implications. One of the reasons I immerse myself in this stuff is to understand the products and services, but also to understand the impact on humans and our society. While it’s easy to think intellectually about privacy, it’s a whole different deal when you have to process the ideas in the context of real issues that you encounter.

Paul Rubin’s falsehoods:

Paul Rubin’s First Falsehood

1) Privacy is free. Many privacy advocates believe it is a free lunch—that is, consumers can obtain more privacy without giving up anything. Not so. There is a strong trade-off between privacy and information: The more privacy consumers have, the less information is available for use in the economy. Since information helps markets work better, the cost of privacy is less efficient markets.

Its not that “privacy is free” anymore than “freedom is free”. Privacy is the right to not be watched all the time. Clearly the groups working on privacy are expending time and energy. Does not sound free to me.

But lets take a closer look at the fallacies.

Fallacy #1.1 : “consumer privacy means the economy has less information” and “information helps the markets work better”.

Paul does not make a case that the consumers’ private information is the information needed to make the markets work. He just says consumers give less information and that information is needed for an efficient economy.

Fallacy #1.2: “helps”

How much value is derived from the consumers private information? Notice that Paul himself is fudging with that wussy word “helps”. Does the economy function 10% less efficient? 5%? 3%? What exactly is the realized benefit to the economy?

Fallacy #1.3: The consumer realizes some benefit

Does the consumer giving up the information realize any tangible value? Or is the economic value realized only to the recipient of the information. Most transactions involve an exchange of value. Does the consumer realize anything of value? How many sites ask for private information and then offer nothing useful. Or worse turn out to be scam sites.

Paul Rubin’s Second Falsehood

2) If there are costs of privacy, they are borne by companies. Many who do admit that privacy regulations restricting the use of information about consumers have costs believe they are born entirely by firms. Yet consumers get tremendous benefits from the use of information.

Think of all the free stuff on the Web: newspapers, search engines, stock prices, sports scores, maps and much more. Google alone lists more than 50 free services—all ultimately funded by targeted advertising based on the use of information. If revenues from advertising are reduced or if costs increase, then fewer such services will be provided.

Fallacy 2.1: Uncle Sam is counting on you! Give up your privacy or the world will end!!

This assertion is simply ludicrous. I know it is sooooo last century, but does anyone remember broadcast TV? maybe radio? Did everyone remember to “register” with your favorite FM station before listening to the free music?

Of course not! Did the advertisers refuse to advertise on radio for the last 70 years because they didn’t have targeted information about the listeners? How about newspapers? Of course not!

Clearly the economy managed to function quite well without demanding private information from consumers.

Fallacy 2.2: News flash: advertising revenue is already down. And it ain’t because of privacy groups.

The basic economics of online advertising is flawed. There is simply so many places to display ads that the value of each display ad even on a popular site like Facebook is in the range of about $0.00002 ( yes, Dorothy much less than a penny) And this is for a site like Facebook which has a lot of private information about its users.

Fallacy 2.3: News flash: Advertisers can use the information

Reality here is that most ad buyers still have very limited mechanisms to segment their target audience: sex, approximate age and that is about it.

All that detailed information the consumer is being asked to give up? for the most part unused.

Fallacy 2.4 The companies depend on the information they are gathering to make enough money to stay in business and without the information the companies will disappear.

Completely without substance. Companies that fold in Silicon Valley go out of business for many reasons. The most common reason is spending all the invested capital before figuring out how they will make money. Viable internet companies don’t go out of business. Once an internet business becomes cashflow positive, the company is successful. Consumer privacy issues have never changed a viable internet business into a failure. The more usual case is that in spite of gathering all this private information, the company couldn’t figure out how to make money with the information.

Paul Rubin’s Third Falsehood

3) If consumers have less control over information, then firms must gain and consumers must lose. When firms have better information, they can target advertising better to consumers—who thereby get better and more useful information more quickly. Likewise, when information is used for other purposes—for example, in credit rating—then the cost of credit for all consumers will decrease.

Fallacy 3.1: Fallacy of the win-lose by implication scenario: “consumers have less control over information, then firms must gain and consumers must lose.”

Paul is arguing the inverse here. He is implying a falsehood, if “consumers have more control over information, then firms must LOSE”. Apparently, Paul can not imagine a scenario where firms manage to function without the consumers’ private information. Paul really needs to revisit the economic history of this country. Maybe Adam Smith can help him out. Once again, the economy managed to function without privacy being invaded.

Fallacy 3.2 Red Herring: Credit scores are not an online privacy issue.

Credit gathering for the purpose of issuing loans are a specific transactions already covered by consumer law. Online privacy is all about information gathering that is not needed for a specific immediate transaction.

Paul Rubin’s Fourth Falsehood

4) Information use is “all or nothing.” Many say that firms such as Google will continue to provide services even if their use of information is curtailed. This is sometimes true, but the services will be lower-quality and less valuable to consumers as information use is more restricted.

For example, search engines can better target searches if they know what searchers are looking for. (Google’s “Did you mean . . .” to correct typos is a familiar example.) Keeping a past history of searches provides exactly this information. Shorter retained search histories mean less effective targeting.

Fallacy 4.1: Google does not need past history to correct a search.

I have search history turned off. And I have had no problems. If this is indeed such a problem for google, then every library patron who searches the internet from a public computer must have this “problem”. After all my search for “butterflies” is going to be blended with the search history of every other library patron.

Fallacy 4.2: The “lower” quality is some how meaningful

At a certain point, additional precision is meaningless. For example, if you ask your kids where they are, is it really more useful if they reply “I am 3.4 meters from the front door facing to 3degrees to the north, sitting down.” or if they say “I am at home”.

Paul Rubin’s Fifth Falsehood

5) If consumers have less privacy, then someone will know things about them that they may want to keep secret. Most information is used anonymously. To the extent that things are “known” about consumers, they are known by computers. This notion is counterintuitive; we are not used to the concept that something can be known and at the same time no person knows it. But this is true of much online information.

Fallacy 5.1 “Anonymous data”

It is relatively easy to deanonymize data. Netflix was forced to cancel their second planned contest because it was demonstratively easy to deanonymize the Netflix data. This was in spite of Netflix doing their best to prevent exactly that. So a motivated company trying to anonymize can’t do so. A less motivated company is going to do better?

Fallacy 5.2 Deanonymizing takes a lot of effort.

In fact, zip code, age, gender deanonymizes 87% of all data. Anyone asking “Happy birthday! How old are you?” at your birthday party has enough information. Netflix is now facing a lawsuit about this.

The suit is also asking the court to stop Netflix from launching its promised second contest to improve the recommendations — this time giving out user data that includes ZIP codes, ages and gender, along with movie ratings and ID numbers substituted for user names.

That’s a foolish idea on Netflix’s part, according to University of Colorado law professor Paul Ohm, who in a blog post in September called the idea “a privacy blunder that could cost millions of dollars in fines and civil damages.” Ohm, a former Justice Department lawyer, recently authored a legal paper calling into question the practice of anonymizing data, essentially finding that if data is useful to researchers, it could also, by definition, be re-identified.

Read More

I think Netflix would disagree with Paul Rubin.

Paul Rubin’s Sixth Falsehood

6) Information can be used for price discrimination (differential pricing), which will harm consumers. For example, it might be possible to use a history of past purchases to tell which consumers might place a higher value on a particular good. The welfare implications of discriminatory pricing in general are ambiguous. But if price discrimination makes it possible for firms to provide goods and services that would otherwise not be available (which is common for virtual goods and services such as software, including cell phone apps) then consumers unambiguously benefit.

Fallacy 6.1 Price discrimination is o.k. no matter what it is based on.

Paul Rubin is willfully ignoring Redlining:

Redlining is the practice of denying, or increasing the cost of, services such as banking, insurance, access to jobs, access to health care, or even supermarkets to residents in certain, often racially determined, areas.

The term “redlining” describes the practice of marking a red line on a map to delineate the area where banks would not invest; later the term was applied to discrimination against a particular group of people (usually by race or sex) no matter the geography. During the heyday of redlining, the areas most frequently discriminated against were black inner city neighborhoods. Through at least the 1990s this practice meant that banks would often lend to lower income whites but not to middle or upper income blacks.

Reverse redlining occurs when a lender or insurer particularly targets minority consumers, not to deny them loans or insurance, but rather to charge them more than would be charged to a similarly situated majority consumer.

Paul Rubin, as a economics professor you should know about Redlining.

Paul Rubin’s Seventh Falsehood

7) If consumers knew how information about them was being used, they would be irate. When something (such as tainted food) actually harms consumers, they learn about the sources of the harm. But in spite of warnings by privacy advocates, consumers don’t bother to learn about information use on the Web precisely because there is no harm from the way it is used.

Fallacy 7.1 Consumers understand and are willing participants in giving up their privacy.

The Facebook privacy policy is longer than the U.S. Constitution:

If you guessed the latter, you’re right. Facebook’s Privacy Policy is 5,830 words long; the United States Constitution, without any of its amendments, is a concise 4,543 words.

Considering how vague the Facebook policy is, most consumers have no idea what the meaning of the policy is.

Fallacy 7.2 : Ignorance means permission.

Presuming that consumer ignorance is because there is no harm is a huge leap. The consumer has no ability to ask Google, Netflix, or Yahoo for an exact list of who got their information. No phone number to call, no email address that will be responded to. Even a motivated consumer is in the dark.

Paul Rubin’s Eighth Falsehood

8 ) Increasing privacy leads to greater safety and less risk. The opposite is true. Firms can use information to verify identity and reduce Internet crime and identity theft. Think of being called by a credit-card provider and asked a series of questions when using your card in an unfamiliar location, such as on a vacation. If this information is not available, then less verification can occur and risk may actually increase.

Fallacy 8.1 Gathering information reduces fraud.

The opposite is true. By having more private information stored on more computers at more companies there are more opportunities for hackers to gain access to the information. The hackers only need to penetrate the company with the weakest security.

Paul Rubin’s Ninth Falsehood

9) Restricting the use of information (such as by mandating consumer “opt-in”) will benefit consumers. In fact, since the use of information is generally benign and valuable, policies that lead to less information being used are generally harmful.

Fallacy 9.1 : “The information is valuable but not really.”

If the information is so valuable, why shouldn’t consumers be allowed to protect it?

Paul Rubin’s Tenth Falsehood

10) Targeted advertising leads people to buy stuff they don’t want or need. This belief is inconsistent with the basis of a market economy. A market economy exists because buyers and sellers both benefit from voluntary transactions. If this were not true, then a planned economy would be more efficient—and we have all seen how that works.

Fallacy 10.1 Advertising doesn’t work!

Do I really need to say more? Advertising has no ability to induce demand. Women with 300 pairs of shoes really need and want 300 pairs of shoes.

Paul Rubin’s Upcoming Falsehood!

Coming next week, Paul Rubin will write an article about the evils of cash purchases. Paul will explain how cash purchases deprive desperately poor banks of needed purchase information.

I might add more later but enough with the pustulance!

Update ( 30 aug 2010 ) : Apparently the NYTimes has noticed that consumers really do care about online privacy:

“Retargeting has helped turn on a light bulb for consumers,” said Jeff Chester, a privacy advocate and executive director of the Washington-based Center for Digital Democracy. “It illustrates that there is a commercial surveillance system in place online that is sweeping in scope and raises privacy and civil liberties issues, too.”

Empathy has been taking a hit for a long time. Remember that seeing executions used to be considered a family sport.

I point the finger at Republicans and the moneymen of Wall Street who made empathy and compassion a sign of weakness. Republicans have also perfected the “art” of professional victimhood. My definition of professional victimhood:

Someone who claims to be a “victim” in order to reduce punishment or to justify monetary gain. A professional victim usually points to minor issues as proof of victimhood in an effort to deflect attention from larger crimes or issues. A professional victim points to being denied monetary gain as proof of victimhood.

Unrealized future benefit is not a sign of a victim.

My definition of a real victim is:

A real victim has goods / health / freedom taken from them, that they had prior to being a victim. Their real victimhood is revealed because they are not trying to use the cloak of “victimhood” to justify financial gain. Real victims are not eager to proclaim their victimhood for profit but only to restore what was previously theirs. Real victims talk about being victims in the context of trying to benefit the community. (A rape victim revealing the rape so that the community is warned)

The real tragedy is that with so many “victims” — society has become jaded to the idea that anyone is a victim. As a result the real victims are victimized a second time by society’s indifference to their suffering.

Some recent professional victims:

• Thain (ex CEO of Merrill Lynch) is a “victim” because he didn’t get his bonus,
• Scooter Libby is a victim because he was convicted a crime (outing a CIA agent) that others got away with

[Update: a bit of necessary clarification. I am not regarding Mike Arrington as a "professional victim". It looks like he faced a real threat and was compelled to take real steps to avoid becoming a real victim. The break back to talking about Jason's email on empathy was not clear enough.]

Returning to the discussion of empathy (or lack thereof) on the internet,
Jason ends his email about empathy talking about Mike Arrington being spit on.

On more than a few posts, Mike has carried out personal attacks that really are unwarranted. Random example PayPerPost Users Freaking Out Over Google PageRank Nuke:

Among the more pathetic messages:

Oh. My. God. Oh my god! I can’t believe this is happening. I NEED to earn money with my blogs, I’m going to have to take every single opp I qualify for every day in order to keep up with expenses.

So Mike terms “pathetic”, someone who is struggling to make ends meet and is now faced with an even greater economic hill.

Mike has had many opportunities to show compassion when having to deliver harsh reviews about a company’s behavior or its products. But many times, Mike has turned a harsh review into a personal attack.

Apparently, now Mike was on the receiving end of a spitting incident and an angry blogger. So what does Mike promise?

Mike promises to be less empathic:

Seeing my parents fear for their lives and not understand how or why their son was in this position changed me, made me a much less forgiving person in general.

As a countervailing example, I would like to recognize this post on TechCrunch (although not by Mike Arrington):

How bad is the economy? In an effort to raise money for his rent, one man named Victor is trying to sell his Digg account on Craigslist for $650.

I’ve set up a TipJoy account for him below. Give him a dollar to help him with his rent, if you’ve got the spare change. All proceeds will go to Victor.

Is this justification for any attacks on Michael or anyone else? No.

However, if the victim has a history of his own personal attacks — maybe he should look at showing more compassion when having to deliver the harsh review.

Having said this, I read TechCrunch every day and I hope Michael does resume blogging but refrains from personal attacks.

I suspect that I have just condemned any hope of a positive review from TechCrunch, but such is life.

• After getting billions in taxpayers’ money, the banks are screwing consumers. Yesterday, I got my version of that. Chase bank decided to unilaterally tacked on fees to a credit card account. These fees are simply because I am maintaining a balance but not actively using the account.
• The RIAA has been aggressively pursuing file sharers first through lawsuits and now by trying to shutdown people’s internet access. The RIAA makes it financially dangerous to have an internet connection.
• DVDs are rigged so that the DVD player refuses to obey the owner of the machine. For example, the owner of the DVD cannot skip or fast forward through the anti-fair-use warning at the beginning of the DVD.
• Installing many games, results in anti-”privacy” malware like SecureROM being installed on the game owner’s computer. The potential to damage of the computer’s operating system is very much of a reality.
• Google refuses to be responsive to any requests emailed in for support. Your gmail account can disappear for any reason what so ever and there is no recourse. [Update 22-Jan-2009 : Google's Feedburner now makes this list as well]
• Facebook, LinkedIn, et. al. have provisions that give them unilateral rights to cut off access to data that you the user created – with no recourse and arbitrarily.
• Bernie Madoff, the most recent Ponzi scheme from Wall Street has wrecked the lives of millions. People’s life savings that they put in the Bernie Madoff basket are gone.

Therefore, I make these resolutions – realizing that I will not be able to perfectly follow them at least at first but never the less will strive to achieve:

1. Any company where it is difficult to impossible to reach a human is untrustworthy. Nothing of value should be entrusted to such a company – (Google, Facebook).
2. Any company that attempts to “lock” me by refusing me easy access to my information should be avoid. (Facebook)
3. “Paperless” options from credit card companies will be refused. The assumption will be that the credit card companies have a vested interest in altering the statements. Having a paper copy, prevents possible tampering.
4. Local companies will be preferred over large companies.
5. Non-profit companies providing the same service will be preferred ( Credit Unions rather than banks )
6. Any “convenience” that has high liability potential will be avoided.
7. Any item that will not obey the owner should not be purchased. (i.e. extremely limited DVD purchases / no upgrade to Blu-Ray / Netflix instead)
8. Any service / product that did not exist before electricity should be examined to see if it is really necessary. (i.e. iPods)
9. No financial expenditure should be a significant purchase. The assumption will be that the product will be faulty, malware or otherwise potentially result in a significant financial loss. (sorry GM, Ford — no new car purchases)
10. No eggs in one basket. No single provider should be able to significantly damage my business or life. For example, code written for Google AppEngine can only be used on Google AppEngine therefore Google can destroy any business using Google AppEngine.
11. Extreme focus on eliminating debt.

I suspect that a large number of people will express disbelief that I would actually follow through on any of this. So let me say this:

• It has been 3 years since we last brought a CD
• The last time, I or my wife brought a new car was in 1992. The cars we currently own we purchase 3 and 8 years ago paying $4000 and $1500 respectively.
• We haven’t had cable for over 2 years and we don’t even bother with broadcast TV
• Our internet service with Earthlink has been down for a week and rather than continue to try to get some response from them we are debating about canceling phone and internet service all together and relying strictly on cell phones.

There is a very nasty piece of software that Sony/BMG and others put out there on their music CDs. I realize that some of you may have heard this, but the anti-virus companies haven’t been doing their job when it comes to removing this software and this is a case of something purchased in the store being able to screw you. And it is a really nasty piece of software that it is impossible to remove.

This software installs a root-kit on Windows machines that causes the computer to slow down and can be used to take control of your computer. (Mac and Linux are not affected)

What makes this so nasty:

You buy a CD. You put the CD into your PC in order to enjoy your music. Sony grabs this opportunity to sneak into your house like a virus and set up camp, and it leaves the backdoor open so that Sony or any other enterprising intruder can follow and have the run of the place. If you try to kick Sony out, it trashes the place.

What it also does is tell Sony every time you play the CD. Because of this it is now known that over 600,000 computers have been infected.

Read more

Technical article that broke the news

Brief technical description

‘Fortunately’, there is a really quick way of finding out if a computer is infected. Create a file or directory that starts with ‘$sys$’, for example $sys$test. If it disappears, then congradulations! You are infected. You might wish to join the class-action lawsuit 1 or lawsuit 2.

An evolving, *but not complete!*, list of CDs that are infected is here, including help in how to spot a CD

But you are better off with avoiding any CD listed on amazon as being ‘copy-protected’ or ‘DRM’ protected. Better safe than sorry.

What can you do if you are not infected?

1. Spread this email. This is not an urban myth!
2. Ask your congressperson to support HR1201- the Digital Media Consumers’ Rights Act (VA-08 Rep. Boucher )
3. Don’t buy copy-protected CDs
4. Support the EFF

P.S. I don’t want any CDs for Xmas. LPs anyone?

Update: To disable autoplay, which is the windows ‘feature’ which helps these nasty DRM programs from doing their thing, see this Microsoft article

Considering how much Chavez has been ranting about the US’s policies and how the government is trying to overthrow him you would think that he should be the one complaining. After all how hard would it be for the CIA to rig the machines so that Chavez was voted out of office? Seems awfully similar to this little CIA operation