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Decode Your Barcode, Get Your Personal Info
Chris writes "The Swipe Toolkit is a collection of web-based tools that sheds light on personal data collection and usage practices in the United States. The tools demonstrate the value of personal information on the open market and enable people to access information encoded on a driver's license or stored in some of the many commercial data warehouses. Check out the Data Calculator, which shows how much your personal info is worth, and how the data brokers get it. It's all part of the Swipe Project, which will be on exhibition at UC-Irvine in March."
I saw this story as a subscriber before most everyone else did, so I go to the site and download all the software before the site ends up getting slashdotted.
I then download java, run the jar, scan my driver's license... doesn't work.
Then I rotate the image 180 and find out it doesn't work.
Then I go online and notice that California doesn't have a 2d barcode on the back of their licenses.
Which comes to the rule of the day, which is apparently applicable to myself:
You can be enough of a nerd to care about what's on your barcode, and still be a complete fucking moron
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
Good thing I didn't throw it away.
Well, it would be, if I didn't live in my parent's attic and if I did actually have a driver's license.
Mod "Overrated" instead of replying "I disagree with you," you coward.
I bet you get great radio reception and have a nice view. Lucky, I'm stuck down here in the basement.
java -jar SwipeBarcode.jar
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
so, where can I copyright my own personal info and sue the pants off of all these freakers passing around unauthorized copies?
"Operating systems suck: you're better off using only the BIOS" --trainsaw.com
i already have my personal data, thanks.
....somebody "swiped" their bandwidth.
...how do we slashdot the sites?
I am a leaf on the wind
Wow, that works a lot better than just reading the number off the front of the card!
My barcode decodes to "THX-1138"...
Mine decodes to "Buy more Ovaltine"
Etiquette is etiquette. He kills his mother but he can't wear grey trousers.
I doubt it's legal to intentionally erase the magnetic stripe. Mine got too close to a hard drive's voice coil magnet. I love those magnets and ripe them out of any worthless hard disk. I should have been more careful.
Not unless you admit it in public.
Aww, I just looked on the back of my liscence and saw that it does have a barcode. I just ripped apart my new Harmon/Kardon speaker for nothing :(
Fact is, if they tried to pull that shit in real life, they'd probably get the shit beaten out of them. But since you can live anonymously behind a monitor, you're like a drunken asshole full of "courage".
You've obviously never been a drunken asshole full of courage. It's pretty different than random whining and pompous condescensions.
I think the physically present part helps to make everything a bit more real.
As my father lik@(munch munch)...