Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Pastimes : The New SI, Who Cares? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RTev who wrote (225)	7/1/1999 10:59:00 PM
From: Claire G	Respond to of 236

Thank you I just said that Claire

To: RTev who wrote (225)	7/1/1999 11:02:00 PM
From: Clark Kent	Respond to of 236

Since it seems to be the topic of the day I thought I'd pass on this email I received yesterday. ************************************************************ This article re: "Global Monitoring" has been translated from Danish to English. It is a provocative read.... The original can be found here : aod.dk Tatooed Take a look in your C:\windows\Cookies-directory. It doesnt matter if you have Windows 95,98 or NT. Under NT your cookies resides under your profile. Take a look at the cookie from Microsoft.com. If you have registered your Windows, your name will be in it. If not, it will just be called "anyuser" or something similar. Anyway, everyone who opens this file in Wordpad will see a line with the text GUID= followed by a code of 32 characters. This 32-character code is your Global User ID. Microsoft is using this number as a way of monitoring their customers. Every time you browse on microsoft.com, for example in order to register your Windows, this code is read. Every time you read a new page at microsoft.com, the code is being used. So, in addition to knowing the registered customers name and adress, Microsoft knows what they are reading. If this worldwide user-identification number also used at Microsofts free email-service Hotmail, Microsoft would also very well know which people are hiding behind the adresses toosexy@hotmail.com, hackerz@hotmail.com and swingers@hotmail.com. But the usage of this global identification number doesnt stop here. Electronic traces Microsoft has designed this system so that the global identification-numbers also are being used by other software, not just Internet Explorer. They are for instance hidden in all Word-documents that are being made. Ok, you can not hide. Somewhere inside the document is your global user-ID, and you cant deny a given document was written on your machine if it contains your user-ID. It was this information which, on 30th of march, led the FBI to arrest a man and accuse him for having written the Melissa macro-virus. (http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/mailissa.html). FBI had retrieved the global user-ID in the Word-document which contained the Melissa-virus, and all they had to do was to contact Microsoft, and ask which door to kick in. The usage of this global user-ID have untill now been pretty much unknown, and it is not sure wether the author of the Melissa macro-virus knew about it. Microsoft's reaction "Oh! Can our software really do that? We hadnt expected that." Said Microsofts communications department. "Are we tatooing all users and their documents? Are we monitoring their usage of the internet? Oops! That must be a mistake. We will look into this and fix it. Because we in Microsoft are always aiming at doing things lawfull and correct, and we try to avoid doing something illegal. "Spotted! Damn! Follow company policy and lie more" It requires a concious plan to build a system for electronic tracking. 32-characters usercodes are not generated by accident, and requires some pretty deliberate lines of code to hide them in all Word-documents. In fact, this usage of GUID, perfectly matches with Microsofts and Big-brother's plans for the future. Windows 2000 The coming version of Windows stops working after a while, if you dont register it. "To avoid piracy". So, to use the new Windows-software, you would have to register. This is like buying a hammer, which places its own ID-number onto every nail it hammers on. You would only have to look at the nail to know who put it there. It is like getting a car, where the tires write their own ID-number in their tracks. So Microsoft and their friends know what they have beein doing, and know what the Microsoft software is capable of. Global user-identity numbers are the police-state's wildest dream, but there are of-course noone who says that Microsoft are good friends with all countrie's police. On the other hand, Microsoft is, due to its hypersocial behaviour, under investigation in a lot of countries. Does one need to be a George Orwell to imagining a deal, that would give Microsoft the opportunity to continue dominating the marked and destroy competition, provided there are built in even more monitoring in the software ? What will happen? For now, the knowledge of this monitoring have been made spotted. We might soon get a statement from Microsofts press-relations office that sounds : "There are now no-more GUID's in Microsoft-software! You are not beeing monitored and tatooed by us anymore! We in Microsoft are always aiming at doing things lawfull and correct, and we try to avoid doing something illegal. The GUID's will not be as evident in the coming versions. You will not be able to find them inside your Word-documents, using a normal hex-editor, and they will not be visible in the normal communication between www-browsers and www-servers. They will be cryptated and spread through the documents in a less visible manner than what is done today. It is due time that one should consider escaping from this expansive and sad prison. ********************************************************************

To: RTev who wrote (225)	7/1/1999 11:14:00 PM
From: Carl R.	Respond to of 236

At best, a site can track what your machine is doing on their site, and perhaps retrieve some information about what you've done on a selection of other sites since a server can only ask for a specific cookie whose name it knows. Exactly. And that is exactly what DCLK does. All DCLK affiliated sites access that same Doubleclick cookie which contains your ID, and when you are referred to DCLK for an ad banner, DCLK records where you have been. As for SI, I beg to disagree with you about the usage of cookies. I did accept the initial cookies, then turned off cookies, and I was immediately returned to the log in page. Thus the new version uses the cookie to remember your ID instead of keeping track the way the current version does. Carl