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Accidental Privacy Spills
ahem writes "A journalist attends the World Economic forum, and writes an email to a few friends. It's a chatty, casual conference report. The conference is a gathering of the 5,000 most powerful people in the world. The report gives a breezy insight into how stuff gets done at that level, and what the concerns are that keep the world's leaders up at night. That email was intended only for the journalist's friends. That email winds up getting plastered all over the net. Here is a very interesting discussion of the implications of this "privacy spill." Make sure you read down to the Epilogue. Here is the email itself." The Lawmeme discussion is quite thoughtful and in-depth, very good reading.
How the hell do all these people know I have a small penis?
This is a symptom of what has become all too common in todays email society - the trivialization of communication.
The "forward" has become a replacement for an actual composed email message. Its easier to maintain the illusion of staying in touch by forwarding some insipid crap rather than taking the time to actually *gasp* drop someone a personal note.
As a result, most email is not private, or more importantly, personal. I can easily imagine what went through the recipients mind - "wow, this is cool, let me forward it to ____". Why wouldn't he ? After all, we foward crap to each other all the time, why should this very interesting email be any different ?
You get something that looks interesting, you forward it. It couldn't POSSIBLY have been intended for ONLY you.
I would bet that had this letter been handwritten, the recipients would not have shown it around.
Welcome to the global communication era.
Word is bad about saving info. You with find previously deleted text, revisions, computer names, account names, sometime passwords embedded into the document. I would have to say that Word is one of the most insecure formats in which to deliver a message.
BTW - this same way has gotten me past passwords more then once.
Patrick Havens (Mr. 573333 to you.) Graphic Artist / Coder / Father / Journeler
I've just skimmed the article (which seems quite good) and read the letter. I can think of a number of reasons the author wouldn't want an e-mail to slip out, but now that it has, I have to say:
:)
That was a damn fine read.
Sure, it could use some editing, but it's not that bad. It's easy to find worse in the print press, let alone on the internet. Besides, that's just form and style... content is what really matters.
And in content, it is actually very interesting and eye-opening. I would be delighted if the author were to write a more lengthy and involved piece on WEF in Davos that actually *is* intended for publication. After this little debacle, it's sure to get a lot of exposure, and I bet she's got a lot more she could say on the subject.
(And sure, the fuss may have all been a marketing gimmick for a forthcoming article. I don't really care, because if so it was really well done!
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
Any major revlations in this "leaked" article? ... Nope...
..from American security and military speakers that, "We need to attack Iraq not to punish it for what it might have, but preemptively, as part of a global war. Iraq is just one piece of a campaign that will last years, taking out states, cleansing the planet."
From the article:
You know, as a resident of this planet, I don't want it "cleansed" by some clown in Washington. The days when there was a standoff between the USA and the USSR, so that neither got to "take out" as many countries as they wanted, look pretty attractive in hindsight.
At its peak, about once every few days (slower since the dot-bust), I'd get a message directed to an address that bounces into my postmaster recycle bin containing all sorts of wonderfully cool private information: business plans, financial spreadsheets, customer contact lists, credit reports. Obviously, this was intended for the identical address at the VC firm, but the sender (wrongly) presumed that they could shorten that to just stonehenge.com.
What's odd is that nearly every time I responded with my curt message of "hey, you shouldn't be sending private info with big financial impact without either verifying the recipient or encrypting the data", they would come back at me, like it was my fault! Weirder, they'd ask me what the proper email address was, like I knew (or cared).
I spent about 20 minutes one day talking with the IT director at the VC company. I tried to make him understand that ultimately, it was his company that might be held liable for not making their email address clear to the clients they were dealing with. But he seemed to think that all I needed to do was agree to forward the misdirected email. We never did agree on that.
I still get misdirected emails for a video production house in Canada as well.
Why don't people understand that every character in an email address matters?
Not really in the personal privacy sphere but I once saw a DEA document that they published in PDF with the name of their agents blacked out. in Acrobat the names were actually blacked out but in OS X preview app you could see them.
I know absolutely nothing about PDF but I assume they have layers.
Ironically it was a report about some Israelis trying to gather information on DEA agents and there they had all their names and addresses published in the internet.
Still, I'm glad I've read it... it's decent news coverage of such a relatively important event. I mean, good use of sources of all types is what journalism is all about... Thanks, Laurie! :-P
Incidentally, this diatribe is from someone who posted a personal note from ex-President Clinton on her website. Presumably with permission, natch, but it's no less private by nature.