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| American AirlinesJust received this email from American Airlines. Talking about efficiency....
"We understand you wish to receive your replacement AAdvantage card soon,
and are pleased to confirm that we are processing your request.
AAdvantage cards are processed the first and third Sunday of each month.
The expected delivery time is approximately 6-8 weeks after the card is
processed.
According to our records, your card was requested on 12-24-07 and
processed on 1-7-08. This makes the estimated delivery date for your
card 3-7-08."
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| Look! Look! My assemblyman is on TV!It's so embarrassing, I have nothing to add.  | | |
| Google PowerA lot (if not most) of us use Google daily, looking for all sorts of stuff. As a strong privacy advocate, I want you to take a look at the flip side of this powerful search engine.
See, I used to have a pretty unique ID. Let's call that unique_id. I used unique_id in college, I used it for my Gmail acccount, I used it for my Xanga, I used it on Amazon, etc.
So when I was sending an email to a stranger, I was potentially serving him with a lot more than just the email message. If the recipient types in unique_id on Google, he could be directed to my blog-- enabling him to find out my political beliefs, personal life stories, etc. He could also be directed to the reviews I wrote on eopinions.com and find out what kinds of products I use. Going a bit further, he could even try http://www.myspace.com/unique_id. That may even show him my MySpace page. The list goes on....
I have a friend who says that he'll never hire someone before looking him/her up on Google. He probably uses the name, email address, etc. to collect data. So if your first name and last name combination is very very unique, and you often use your full name on the web, you probably aren't safe from this prying employer.
Now, does it feel like you are being violated? I definitely do. The web doesn't seem all that anonymous anymore, does it?
I no longer use one unique ID for all websites. I try something more generic for my ID, like "michael" or "tomato." With those words, it's much more difficult to aggregate one specific user's information since there are so many duplicates. Of course, the down side of it is that you probably can't get michael@yahoo.com, so you gotta be creative.. But then the catch 22 is that if you are creative, your name becomes unique, and you'll run into the problem I mentioned earlier..
The answer for me is to use a different ID for different websites. Yes, it's confusing but you can use programs like RoboForm that will remember ID & password combinations for different websites for you. (of course that program itself has privacy implications but i won't go into that now..)
**** Read on if you use Korean websites ****
Koreans didn't really like the whole concept of anonymity on the internet. People were writing libelous comments on portals like Naver and Daum, and they, along with the Ministry of Information and Technology, felt that these portals must collect residency ID numbers when an account is created. (Residency ID number is a 13 digit unique number issued to Korean citizens when they are born. It's similar to Social Security Number) So the government mandated all portals with more than x number of daily unique visitors to collect residency ID number for all its users.
This is a big problem. Now, all portals have the exact same primary key for all their users! If you know anything about computer database... well, you have a unique key, the residency ID in this case, you can "join" all data spread across multiple databases and tables. That means data spread over many different servers (Naver, Daum, Yahoo, DC Inside, etc) can potentially be joined to create a holistic view of your every activity on those websites. Fathom that for a minute. Every single comments you wrote, all the emails on the servers, perhaps even all the news articles you have read can be consolidated.
It gets worse. Residency ID number isn't just used on the web. It's used when you sign up for a plan for your cell phone. It's used when you open a bank account or a credit card account. But wait a minute. What can your credit cards do these days? The built-in T-Money chip on your credit card allows you to take the bus, subways, now even taxis. And guess what. Your credit card company maintains such records as the date and time you got on and off the subway, the subway station you got on and off and much more. (Don't trust me. Log onto your credit card company's website, and you can look them up yourself)
You might say, "Oh but those companies will never share the data." I beg to differ!
More to come later....
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| China's Great FirewallDid you know Xanga along with Blogspot, WordPress, LiveJournal are blocked in China? | | |
| This plastic surgeon, I respect.Living in a nation where so many doctors are choosing to enter the lucrative fields of plastic surgery and dermatology, I have come to question the validity of the respect given to the medical professional for "saving people's lives." This week's Newsweek has an interesting article on the exhibition in London. Changing the Face of Modern War
A London exhibition shows how far reconstructive surgery has come- and what that means for soldiers. Read the full article here. For doctor Harold Gillies, I definitely do have my respect. | | |
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