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GeneralRe: It can be useful,,, Pin
  Forogar  28-May-17 7:06
professional  Forogar  28-May-17 7:06 
GeneralRe: It can be useful,,, Pin
raddevus28-May-17 7:52
mvaraddevus28-May-17 7:52 
GeneralRe: It can be useful,,, Pin
kalberts29-May-17 1:04
kalberts29-May-17 1:04 
GeneralRe: It can be useful,,, Pin
Kornfeld Eliyahu Peter29-May-17 1:07
professionalKornfeld Eliyahu Peter29-May-17 1:07 
GeneralRe: It can be useful,,, Pin
Daniel Pfeffer29-May-17 1:57
professionalDaniel Pfeffer29-May-17 1:57 
GeneralRe: It can be useful,,, Pin
lopatir29-May-17 2:11
lopatir29-May-17 2:11 
GeneralRe: It can be useful,,, Pin
Daniel Pfeffer29-May-17 3:47
professionalDaniel Pfeffer29-May-17 3:47 
GeneralRe: It can be useful,,, Pin
kalberts29-May-17 3:30
kalberts29-May-17 3:30 
Even if you connect to a web site using HTTPS, some MITHM will know exactly which web site you connected to.

There is "monitoring" that is very difficult to avoid if you buy stuff from web shops, such as Amazon: They try to analyze your interests, attitudes and opinions, so they can give you offer that maximizes their profits. I frequently buy DVD movies from Amazon, and was surprised when they suddenly started suggesting to me a whole bunch of gay movies, some of them very obviously on the erotic site. Now I have nothing against gay people, and I happen to live in a culture that fully accepts homosexuality, but I have never been attracted to my own sex in that sense. So I was puzzled: Where did Amazon get the idea that I am gay?

It took a couple months before I found the explanation. I had bought a pile of DVDs, and didn't play them all the first week. One was laying around for quite a while before I watched it: An Italian "art" movie from the 1960s, black-and-white, a mythological story with gods and demigods. Anyone with some insight into classical mythology in art will know that you'll stand with one foot into the "clothing optional" landscape. In several scenes, of the demigods did not exactly wear a suit and tie Smile | :) . There were no trace of erotics in the movie at all, simply this fact that a demigod did not wear clothes. That was enough for Amazon to assume that I am gay.

I was more amused than bothered by this. But if I had been living in another culture, one condemning all sorts of non-standard preferences, it certainly could have caused med trouble. Say, friends or neighbours visiting me, and seeing my PC screen when I log in to Amazon, seeing me appear as a frequent buyer of gay movies. That could be rather bad for my reputation, to say the least.

Authorities have become very eager to use "big data" to decide who they are going to "keep an eye on". Like all big data processing, this is almost by definition an automated process - which may come to some surprisingly wrong conclusions. Several investigations have been based on which terms the suspect has specified to search engines on the net; they have identified "patterns" that never existed in that user's mind. After the bombing of the Norwegian Government headquarters and susequent shooting of 79 youth, done by a right-wing Norwegian terrorist in 2011, police dug up no less than ten thousand individual pieces of evidence that was handed over to the court. The guy was said not to be known to the police before his act of terror; the ten thousand pieces of evidence was dug up in hindsight. So they could do the same with every one of us, just to prove that we are enemies of the nation. Or enemies of Good Morals. Or...

This fellow was not a very active Internet user, and six years ago we were far less dependent on the Internet (and a major fraction of the evidence was from before Internet was commonly used at all). Today, with our heavy Internet dependency, they could probably dig up fifty thousand pieces of evidence, combining a search for 'diesel oil' in 2014 with a search for 'nitrate based fertilizer' in 2017, concluding that this person is planning to make a bomb of the same kind as the 2011 bomber.

I try to reduce the amount of electronic traces I leave behind me. I certainly cannot avoid it completely, but I see the disadvantages of both being suspeced of being a terrorist and (in some cultures) of being a gay.

Yes, I am paranoid...
GeneralAsync in C#: resources for understanding Pin
raddevus28-May-17 5:25
mvaraddevus28-May-17 5:25 
GeneralWhoop-de-doo: you can get the old Calculator back for Win 10 Pin
BillWoodruff28-May-17 4:45
professionalBillWoodruff28-May-17 4:45 
GeneralRe: Whoop-de-doo: you can get the old Calculator back for Win 10 Pin
Ron Anders28-May-17 4:58
Ron Anders28-May-17 4:58 
GeneralRe: Whoop-de-doo: you can get the old Calculator back for Win 10 Pin
dandy7228-May-17 5:19
dandy7228-May-17 5:19 
PraiseRe: Whoop-de-doo: you can get the old Calculator back for Win 10 Pin
Cornelius Henning29-May-17 3:33
professionalCornelius Henning29-May-17 3:33 
GeneralRe: Whoop-de-doo: you can get the old Calculator back for Win 10 Pin
Caslen30-May-17 0:09
Caslen30-May-17 0:09 
GeneralExtended vocabulary... Pin
Kornfeld Eliyahu Peter28-May-17 4:02
professionalKornfeld Eliyahu Peter28-May-17 4:02 
GeneralRe: Extended vocabulary... Pin
OriginalGriff28-May-17 4:54
mveOriginalGriff28-May-17 4:54 
GeneralRe: Extended vocabulary... Pin
Daniel Pfeffer28-May-17 4:56
professionalDaniel Pfeffer28-May-17 4:56 
GeneralRe: Extended vocabulary... Pin
Kornfeld Eliyahu Peter28-May-17 6:31
professionalKornfeld Eliyahu Peter28-May-17 6:31 
GeneralRe: Extended vocabulary... Pin
BillWoodruff28-May-17 5:01
professionalBillWoodruff28-May-17 5:01 
GeneralRe: Extended vocabulary... Pin
Kornfeld Eliyahu Peter28-May-17 6:36
professionalKornfeld Eliyahu Peter28-May-17 6:36 
GeneralRe: Extended vocabulary... Pin
Cornelius Henning28-May-17 7:21
professionalCornelius Henning28-May-17 7:21 
GeneralRe: Extended vocabulary... Pin
Sander Rossel28-May-17 8:17
professionalSander Rossel28-May-17 8:17 
GeneralRe: Extended vocabulary... Pin
Brisingr Aerowing28-May-17 8:36
professionalBrisingr Aerowing28-May-17 8:36 
GeneralRe: Extended vocabulary... Pin
Rage28-May-17 8:56
professionalRage28-May-17 8:56 
GeneralRe: Extended vocabulary... Pin
CPallini28-May-17 23:05
mveCPallini28-May-17 23:05 

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Were you affected by the geomagnetic storms this past weekend?
Communication disruptions, electrified pipes, random unexplained blue-screens in Windows - the list of effects is terrifying.
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