[11611] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Let your fingers do the walking on the Internet
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Paul Robinson)
Mon Apr 11 06:43:05 1994
Date: Mon, 11 Apr 1994 03:47:29 -0400 (EDT)
From: Paul Robinson <PAUL@tdr.com>
Reply-To: Paul Robinson <PAUL@tdr.com>
To: Comp Privacy <COMP-PRIVACY@uwm.edu>,
Privacy in Computing <privacy@vortex.com>,
Risks in computing <RISKS@csl.sri.com>,
Everyone Else Lurking on Com-Priv <com-priv@psi.com>,
telecom@delta.eecs.nwu.edu,
Net Happenings <net-happenings@is.internic.net>,
Ethics in Computing <ETHICS-L@vm.gmd.de>
>From: Paul Robinson <PAUL@TDR.COM>
Organization: Tansin A. Darcos & Company, Silver Spring, MD USA
-----
Saturday I was over at Micro Center, a computer store in Vienna, Virginia.
Visiting the book department, I spotted a new set of three books,
highlighted in plain view, all having the word "Internet" on the cover.
One was a book on things you can find, e.g. a list of sources for things
such as Weather information, FTP sites for various types of files, and so
on, e.g. a list of services similar to the ones on the internet, only
broader and much better organized. It was also about an inch thick, which
meant it was about 500 pages long. I didn't have much chance to look at
it since I don't have that much interest in the services on the
Internet. I know they are comprehensive, I just never thought about it.
The second book was printed on yellow paper and I think it referred to
itself as "The Internet Yellow Pages". In essence it was a topic and
subject cross reference for news groups and mailing lists. This, I think
is a good idea. It's better if someone knows that, for example, Com Priv
deals with the Commercialization and Privatization of the Internet and not
with say, Private Compost heap management. (Although some people who
read that group might think the latter is more accurate.) Or that the
Bitnet list ETHICS-L@VM.GMD.DE deals with the ethics of computer
programming and computer-related ethical issues, rather than it being a
general ethics list.
This too, was a Phone Book sized tome, about 3/4 inch thick, and it also
mentioned that it covers about 2700+ newsgroups, which doesn't make it
comprehensive (as someone corrected me earlier this month, the worldwide
set of public newsgroups is currently over 8,000 and runs close to 100
megabytes a day.)
What I found most interesting was the third book, also about an inch
thick, e.g. phone book sized, and what could probably be called "The
Internet White Pages". Someone started collecting E-Mail addresses and
names for people from public messages, probably those posted on newsgroups
and heavily circulated mailing lists and put them in alphabetical order.
A practice very similar to that done by the address lookup program on
rtfm.mit.edu (formerly "pit-manager").
Apparently the compiler of the book collected some 100,000 people's names
and printed them up. This book is fairly recent but not that much. As
with most people, I looked myself up. While it does have my address on
access.net and MCI Mail, it does not have my address here on TDR.COM,
which implies that it stopped collecting before I started using it
almost exclusively, which would be before December 5, 1993, which is when
the TDR.COM domain is listed as last updated via WHOIS.
Some people seem to have gotten upset over the collection of E-Mail
addresses for advertising. Now, here, someone has generally collected
everyone's address off public messages, and published them in a book that
is sold over the counter in a computer store. I wonder how people feel
about this issue.
The author said in the preface quite frankly that he had started
"surrepticiously" collecting E-Mail addresses for a while. I put that
word in quotes because I think that was his term, not mine. I am trying
to avoid being judgemental here, because I don't see it as that big a
problem. My E-Mail address is not my street address and doesn't tell you
where I live or what I do or how much money I make or how educated I am.
But this practice does annoy some people and I wanted to let some people
know that if you are worried about the collection of names and E-Mail
addresses, you are a little late, someone's already done a White Pages
that anyone can purchase. And if it's successful, I'll bet there will be
new issues, as well as possibly competitors.
Seriously, I have a full newsgroup feed coming into the site I use, there's
nothing that says I couldn't set up a cron job that runs several times a day
to scan the spool files and collect addresses for subsequent
publication. Anyone who has access to a full news feed could have done
the same thing.
Here's some questions to think about: What do you think about the
practice? Is it right or wrong and why? Does this impact people's
security? Are there risks involved if your E-Mail address becomes well
known or if it is misprinted in a published "white pages"? Are there
other considerations to think about?
---
Paul Robinson - Paul@TDR.COM
Voted "Largest Polluter of the (IETF) list" by Randy Bush <randy@psg.com>
-----
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