Article :
The following article on the vulnerability of citizens' personal information is adapted from an article that first appeared in Forbes magazine on November 29, 1999. It was accessed at on
February 25, 2007.
The End of Privacy Adam L. Penenberg
The phone rang and astrander sangat the other end of the line: "Happy Birthday to you." That was spooky - the next day I would turn 37. "Your full name is Adam Landis Penenberg," the caller continued. "Landis?" My mother's maiden name. Then Daniel Cohn, Web detective, told me the rest of my "base identifiers " - my birth date, address in New York, Social Security number. Just two days earlier i had issued Cohn a challenge: Starting with my byline, find as much information about me as you can." That did not take long," said.
it took about five minutes," Cohn said, "I'll have the rest within a week. And the line went dead.
In all of six days, Dan Cohn and his web detective agency. Docusearch com shattered every notion had about privacy in this county. Using only a keyboard and the phone, he was able to uncover the innermost details of my life - whom I call late at night; how much money I have in the bank; my salary and rent. He even got my unlisted phone numbers, both of them.
For decades, information like this was kept in large mainframe computers that were difficult to access. The move to desktop PCs and local servers in the 1990s distributed these data far and wide. Computers now hold half a billion bank accounts, half a billion credit card accounts, hundreds of millions of mortgages and retirement funds and medical claims and more.The Web links it altogether.
As e-commerce grows, marketers and busybodies can access more
consumer data than ever before. It's far worse than you think. Advances in
search techniques and the rise of massive databases leave you vulnerable."
The spread of the Web is the final step. It will make most of the secrets you have more instantly available than ever before, ready to reveal themselves in a few tapos on the keyboard .