This is one of nearly a thousand foresight statements shared by people from around the world. To return to the Voices of the People home page or to refine your search, click here.
Name: Moogle
Bio: Internet pirate and web programmer
Area of Expertise: Advocate/Voice of the People
Topic: Privacy
Headline: There is no such thing as privacy
Nutshell: Anonymity is important, but it can lead to trouble.
Vision:The way the internet is today, you can not be sure who anybody is. As an example, I will write a little about emailing, and the privacy issues involved.
Anyone can send an email and make it appear as if it originated from your address, because that is the way the email protocol is built. It wasn’t created for a publicly available network, and it is definitely not suited for one. But to be able to be sure the sender is really who he claims to be, one would have to create a whole new email protocol and convince every other server administrator on the net to start using the new one.
But then you have to think about whether you want everybody to know who you really are on the internet or not, since a system like that would practically have to monitor all of your activities on the internet.
Would you really want your real-life identity connected to everything you do on the internet? Would you want anybody to see exactly what you are doing? If not, who is going to decide who is going to be allowed to see what you are doing? The police? How would it feel to know that the authorities are watching your every footstep?
I wouldn’t like that. I don’t think anyone would. But that is what we would have to put up with if we wanted ensure our own internet safety.
And the way the internet is going today, with several spam messages in almost everyone’s mailbox every day, and even the sites my grandfather visits are constantly trying to attack his computer, I don’t think there is much else we can do than hope that people can realize that the internet isn’t about making money by forcing people to watch their advertisements, but a great source of information.
Let’s hope people realize that filling a mailbox with advertisements doesn’t make its owner want to buy the products.
Date Submitted: April 11, 2005
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