Tuesday, December 13, 2005

Supposition of a Conspiracy Theory?

After about a month of blogging, and conducting some preliminary research into this matter, while browsing to other peoples blog, I noticed that there are some interesting observations which leads me to form certain hypothesis . The ever suspicious mind that I have keeps bringing up that this could be a conspiracy theory. Let us look at what we have to consider where there could be basis to my hypothesis:

a) The theory of 6 degrees of separation between any people. These seems to be the philosophy incorporated into marketing of the "Gmail" service. Do you know, when "Google" sends you an invite, and you are suppose to invite frens to be entitled for a Gmail account, that is not only a brilliant marketing approach but also provide a sense of exclusive brand positioning. However, in doing this way or marketing, you then can link one account with another, since generally one only invites friends.

b) The provision of Blogs Hosters providing a less then ideal hosting mechanism, so that users leverages on other Service Providers to improve their blogs, thus leading to many accounts being created on many hosters which then subsequently can lead to the profiling of Bloggers and their interest and activities. Let us analyse what these services do:-
  • Tecnorati - Service that provides search of who is linking to who and indirectly provides a search engine to the blog as it tracks updates between these links. Which leads to some form of community tracking which may arise to profiling of interest within the communities. (Require Account)
  • Blogrolling - Automated Blog listing service that one subscribes to determine which of the blogs are updated and subsequently identifying the "activeness" of blogs and frequency of updates. Also can lead to rating and popularity of blogs (Require Account)
  • Flickr - Service where photograph can be hosted so that you can link to personal blogs for publishing. (Require Account)
  • Haloscan - Comment Page with value added features for bloggers to leverage to experience enhance feature sets. (Require Account)
  • Adsense - Blog Advertising, putting a name to the blog (by cheque)
Ironically, when an individual choose to host its Blog, he/she may do so anonymously and his/her privacy maintained, but as he/she interacts, this anonymosity is watered down. However, when the blogger then chooses to use other providers and creates accounts for the services, these then erodes further the confidentiality of the blogger. Individualy the dots maybe insignificant but collectively these then provides the links and all the dots can then be joined. Which leads to my hypothesis that this is now becoming one of the best profiling mechanism.

How then will the users privacy be protected?

It is even more of a concern if these database are then shared , though under different organizations, should a state of emergency be declared, these can then be used to confirm the connection and links while putting a face or a name to the so called anonymous blogger. Thought process and manner of writing can then be used to determine the bloggers state of mind and their inclinations (as evidentiary support).

Someone tell me I am wrong and too captivated in these Conspiracy Theories or just plain paranoid.

2 comments:

PickYin said...

There is no privacy and confidentiality on the W3. That's the whole point of its existance.

The Editor said...

[spoonfork] The response to your queries will soon be answered though it is quite a long draft.

[pickyin]Perhaps in general now with influx of new technologies but in its original guise (before the advent of blogs) there was better anonymity, don't you think so?