Assume the Identity

Over the past few months Evan Ratliff and Wired magazine ran a simple social experiment: they wanted to see how easy it was to assume a new identity in the Information Age (and leave your old identity completely behind). Evan’s plan was to disappear on August 15 and try to stay hidden until September 15, challenging people to identify his new persona and locate him. Evan would agree to live a “normal” life with his new identity, and certain details of his activities (e.g. purchases) would be posted online by Wired available to anyone who wanted to join the search. These details would be typical pieces of information that a private investigator would have access to on a real-life manhunt.

The story raises a number of interesting questions about the nature of anonymity (or pseuodnymity) in such a techno-centric age. Evan used both technical hacks and misinformation to keep people off his trail, but eventually, he was found.

You can read the lengthy tale of this vanishing act at Wired.

Facebook: friends and foes

Natalie Blanchard, an IBM employee in Quebec, got into trouble recently when she posted pictures of herself on Facebook. On the surface, these pictures weren’t particularly troubling. The photos depicted her enjoying a couple of parties and a trip to the beach. The problem with the photos was that she was being ‘cheerful.’ Apparently, Natalie was on medical leave from her job for depression when investigators from the company’s health insurer (Manulife) noticed the photos. In their opinion if Natalie was well enough to go on trips to the beach she was well enough to work, so they stopped paying out her benefits.

Understandably, Manulife doesn’t want people abusing the system, but depression is a notoriously hard condition to treat. Did Manulife have the right to terminate her benefits? Was she treated fairly? To be honest, there are still a lot of questions in this case. Fortunately, both sides will make their arguments in front of the Quebec Supreme Court on December 8. Maybe we’ll find out more then.

For a short overview of the story (and some interesting questions) visit CNN’s Technically Incorrect blog. Thanks to Brad D for the link!

Stay tuned for another ad

The NYT is reporting on a recent patent application by Apple Computer that is particularly curious. They’re filing for a patent that enables them to put advertising on nearly any device with a screen, but that’s not the interesting part. This patent also includes an “enforcement routine” that forces people to watch the ads and respond to them. In some cases, the device could be programmed to freeze until the viewer proves they watched the ad. It seems strange for a company like Apple that is swimming in cash to propose such a strong-armed approach to ads, but you never know what they’re up to.

Read more from the NYT.

Switzerland erased from Google

Okay, well not exactly… but Switzerland is upset about Google’s street view application. Switzerland’s privacy watchdog is concerned that the service could potentially expose too much information about people – especially without consent from individual citizens. So far Google has been slow to adapt the changes requested by the government, forcing officials to take them to court. Other European countries (notably Germany) have stated similar concerns about privacy and Street view. We’ll see where this goes…

Read more from the CBC.

No news is good news?

A few days ago Rupert Murdoch (of News Corp) announced to Sky News Australia, that he was going to remove all of their news content from search engines (including Google News). News Corp owns a number of newspapers (notably the Wall Street Journal) and is presumably frustrated with giving away its valuable news content for free. I understand the challenge that newspaper publishers face in the Internet age, but there are (at least) two problems with this strategy: News Corp doesn’t hold a monopoly on news coverage, and people don’t like to pay for content at all.

You can find the story in numerous places online. Here’s a short story from the BBC (a news organization!) and a more humorous account from Wired.

Are you addicted…

…to the Internet? BoingBoing has an interesting post about Internet addiction – a condition that has yet to be well-defined. Before you snicker (as I did), recognize that 20% of people who check themselves into an addiction rehab/recovery program are there for Internet addiction (and some psychologists have been treating it since 1994). Maybe you’re addicted too. Dr. Kimberly Young has put together a quiz at netaddiction.com – of course, you’ll have to hop on the Internet to do the quiz.

Read more from BoingBoing.

Men and women *are* different

Here’s an amusing story reported by the BBC about how men and women take different approaches to technology. According to the company Gadget Helpline (a tech help service in the UK), 64% of male callers had not read the instructions first (compared to 24% of female callers). Women spend 32% longer on the phone with the help staff than the men, but the staff actually preferred talking to women. Here’s my favourite part of the article: “In general terms men treat technology as something to be understood and conquered while women are more motivated by appliances that benefit them.”

Read more on the story from the BBC.

Change of Addresses

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) recently voted to allow for non-Latin characters to be used in top level domain names (.com, .jp, .cn, etc.). Previous to this announcement Chinese, Arabic, Korean and other non-Latin characters could be used before the ‘dot,’ but the URL always ended with letters from the Latin alphabet. Now, an entire URL can be written in non-Latin characters. The hope is that this will make the Internet more accessible to millions of people. Some are concerned that allowing other languages in the domain names will make it harder to fight cyberattacks, but ICANN seems to think such concerns are unwarranted.

For more statistics and opinions you can find the story from the NYT.

Facebook from the Grave

Facebook has recently announced that when people pass away, their profiles can be “memorialized” by friends and family. It’s an interesting concept. What should we do with online information about our loved ones? Facebook has taken some care to remove more sensitive issues (status updates, contact information, suggested friends list, etc.), but I’m not sure that’s a perfect solution. When someone dies–particularly if it’s a tragic situation–people deal with their grief very differently. Certainly, some people will like the fact that they can remember the person via Facebook, while others will not wanted to be reminded of the loss at all. As we migrate more and more of our lives online, questions like these are going to become even more difficult.

Read more from the BBC or from the Facebook blog.

Atlanta mapathon (no it’s not a fundraiser)

OpenStreetMap (OSM) is attempting to make the capital city of Georgia the most digitally mapped city in the world. Their ambitious plan is to map everything from emergency phones to police precincts. The main difference between this project and others (e.g. Google maps) is that the data will be freely available. Developers who want to use the information will not be restricted by Google’s Terms of Use or have to license the content from elsewhere (which costs lots of money). The hope is that free data without restrictions will create entirely new and innovative applications. How are they getting this data? Well, they’ve organized a mapathon. About 200 volunteers will wander around the city with GPS devices locating everything of interest (and potentially some things that aren’t). Geo-nerds unite.

Read more on the story from the BBC.