Info on privacy

[fran7371@uidaho.edu (John Francis)]

For those interested in the very complex issue of privacy I can recommend
two outstanding web sites:

Privacy Rights Clearinghouse    www.privacyrights.org

Privacy Journal      www.townonline.com/privacyjournal

There is an excellent new book, "Database Nation" by S. Garfield, that
covers the gamut of privacy issues,, including many you might not even have
thought of.  The Latah County library has a copy.

The privacy web sites and "Database Nation" have sensible suggestions for
legislation to protect privacy while allowing our society to
function--after all,  we do need a lot of these data in order to function
in a wired world.  An impractical or unsophisticated piece of legislation
coming out of Boise would be worse than nothing at all.

A couple of random privacy nuggets that I find interesting:

--When you change your address, you should use a Postal Service Temporary
Change of Address form (good for one year), not a Permanent Change of
Address form.  The Postal Service sells the Permanent forms to listing and
junk mail companies, but not the Temporary ones.

--Whenever you dial an 800, 888, or 900 number the company you're calling
may be automatically recording your telephone number and selling it to
telemarketers.

--Health insurance companies routinely sweep major illness web sites and
correlate the people browsing them with the email addresses of their
clients.  (This is the function of "cookies".) Thus if you suddenly begin
browsing cancer sites your medical insurance company knows immediately. And
if the company finds the browsing occurred a day or two after an exam, (the
company knows you've had the exam because it's billed for it), the red flag
really goes up; your insurance may be dropped for an "unrelated" reason.
You have no recourse because the company can deny it's dropping you for
being a possible cancer victim. After all, it can truthfully say it has not
even been notified of your problem.





John Francis
311 East 6th St., #2
Moscow, ID 83843
(208) 883-0105       fran7371@uidaho.edu