Selling Other People's Identities

joeflies writes "The San Francisco Chronicle has an extensive article on the controversial site Jigsaw, which makes it easy to sell other people's identity information. Jigsaw encourages people to collect business cards and email signature blocks, which is compiled together into a searchable database. Participants earn points towards their own searches or earn money. Is this exactly what Scott McNealy meant when he said electronic privacy is dead?"

Comments

Very extensive article.

[Lord Aurora]

For anyone who hasn't RTFA yet, go do it now. The summary is a mess of paranoia, and, while there might be something to actually worry about with Jigsaw, TFA does a great job of showing how it works and what exactly could and could not happen. The creator likens Jigsaw to Wikipedia--and it's a pretty good comparison, in that both rely solely on users to edit and maintain information. No, Wikipedia doesn't aid in identity theft--separate issue entirely. Depending on how stupid your average Jigsaw user is, it could be a great tool or a dangerous advantage.

Given how stupid your average human is, though, there isn't much hope for the former.

Re:Private Business Cards

[Sam Ritchie]

Actually, now that I've read TFA (gauche, I know), the CEO is quoted as saying "Jigsaw doesn't touch non-business information with a 10-foot pole", lists examples of the type of information not accepted, and relates a circumstance in which inappropriate information was removed. So, yes.

How Prescient!

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

"Is this exactly what Scott McNealy meant when he said electronic privacy is dead?"

Yes. This is exactly what he meant.
After leaving his job as CEO of Sun, McNealy went on to found Jigsaw.

street tombolas in germany

[AlgorithMan]

in germany it is illegal to pass someones name,adress,phonenumber,etc on without his approval...

thats why there are always guys on the street asking people if they want to win this and that - they only have to answer the quiz question (like 2+2=4 or 60000000000000?) where the damn answer is somewhere on the pamphlet and if you don't know, then they tell you the answer BECAUSE they only want you to fill out the form (name, adress, phone number) and SIGN that you agree to the conditions of the tombola

the conditions are on the back side of the form, written in light gray in font size 0.1 and CLEARLY contain the condition that they are allowed to sell your personal data....