qubit
Overclocked quantum bit
- Joined
- Dec 6, 2007
- Messages
- 17,865 (2.98/day)
- Location
- Quantum Well UK
System Name | Quantumville™ |
---|---|
Processor | Intel Core i7-2700K @ 4GHz |
Motherboard | Asus P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3 |
Cooling | Noctua NH-D14 |
Memory | 16GB (2 x 8GB Corsair Vengeance Black DDR3 PC3-12800 C9 1600MHz) |
Video Card(s) | MSI RTX 2080 SUPER Gaming X Trio |
Storage | Samsung 850 Pro 256GB | WD Black 4TB | WD Blue 6TB |
Display(s) | ASUS ROG Strix XG27UQR (4K, 144Hz, G-SYNC compatible) | Asus MG28UQ (4K, 60Hz, FreeSync compatible) |
Case | Cooler Master HAF 922 |
Audio Device(s) | Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty PCIe |
Power Supply | Corsair AX1600i |
Mouse | Microsoft Intellimouse Pro - Black Shadow |
Keyboard | Yes |
Software | Windows 10 Pro 64-bit |
Yes, it looks like the days of posting anonymously, or psuedononymously on a forum, as we do on TPU are numbered, if this article on New Scientist and the posting example set by www.techcrunch.com is anything to go by - go on, click on a story and try to post anonymously...
Now, the following is just f* scary.
Best to be as Mr Average as possible, then...
And this is a really important point, one which people are so used to doing, they don't even think about it:
Oddly, nowhere in this article does it discuss the likelyhood that identity theft will become rampant. Tinfoil hats go on
New Scientist
So, should TPU adopt Big Brother-style user identifying software like this? Vote in the poll - yes, it's a public poll, we want to know who you are.
And my vote? A big, fat, NO.
Illegal and just plain bad behaviour online has sparked discussions of new laws to combat cyberbullying and secure the internet from criminal activity. Such legislation may soon be irrelevant. Several companies are building tools that can identify internet users with unprecedented precision. Proponents claims the new tools will lead to a safer and less hostile internet. If the internet is to keep developing, they say, perhaps we can no longer afford to live in an anonymous environment where no one need ever be held accountable for their actions. Are we ready to abandon the option of shielding our online identity?
"The internet would be better if we had an accurate notion that you were a real person as opposed to a dog, or a fake person, or a spammer," Eric Schmidt, Google's executive chairman, told an audience in the UK at the Edinburgh Television Festival in August.
Now, the following is just f* scary.
There too, however, identity technologies are waiting to catalogue their misdeeds. Whether or not you share your identity with the websites you visit is no longer entirely within your control.
Indelible ID
One of the most powerful identity tracking systems now available is offered by BlueCava, a company based in Irvine, California, that helps websites monitor fraud, among other things. BlueCava's software "fingerprints" any device that someone uses to visit a website, be it a desktop or laptop computer or a mobile device like a smartphone. That fingerprint is made possible by the hundreds of types of data that browsers send when connecting to a website, from the machine's operating system to the time zone in which the device is set to operate (see diagram).
You might be surprised at just how mundane these details can be. Consider one of the data types passed from browser to website: the fonts installed on your machine. They will include not just the fonts that it came with, but also fonts that may have been included with software you installed, making the complete list distinctive. "A typical machine has 4000 to 20,000 fonts," says BlueCava chief executive David Norris. Fall outside this average and your machine is distinctive. "If you have 1926 that's a lot of uniqueness," Norris says.
See more: view the data your browser is passing to websites using an online test from privacy.net.
BlueCava combines these bits of information to create a unique ID number for every device that accesses a website running the company's software. The firm has assembled a dossier on 1 billion devices, and Norris estimates that the number will double in the coming year. At this rate, it won't be long, he says, before all 10 billion internet-enabled computers in the world have a place in BlueCava's repository. Norris claims that when presented with a query from a machine already in the database, the software can recognise its source 99.5 per cent of the time.
Best to be as Mr Average as possible, then...
And this is a really important point, one which people are so used to doing, they don't even think about it:
What's more, online social networks collapse our social lives to a single space, completely unlike normal life where we generally interact with different groups at different times and in different ways. A person might share a radical political view with a friend but shy away from expressing the same opinion at work, for example. It is normal for us to take on what sociologists call different "social roles", yet this behaviour is inhibited by the openness of Facebook, and less directly by the less transparent technologies that bind our online activities into a single identity.
Oddly, nowhere in this article does it discuss the likelyhood that identity theft will become rampant. Tinfoil hats go on
New Scientist
So, should TPU adopt Big Brother-style user identifying software like this? Vote in the poll - yes, it's a public poll, we want to know who you are.
And my vote? A big, fat, NO.
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