Salon succumbs to paranoia
Amazon’s 43 Secrets written by Salon’s Katharine Mieszkowski is a speculative piece of crap. In this period of national fear-mongering, Mieszkowski takes advantage of the tinfoil-hat set’s thin skin to press the notion that a multi-billion dollar corporation, Amazon.com, is secretly funding a startup with the intention of gathering personal data on individuals “confiding their hopes, dreams and goals” on the site 43 Things. Phooey.
And really, who cares? Just about everything a user does on 43 Things is public. Anyone could grab users’ “hopes and dreams” and do what they want with it. The only pieces of information not publicly available are users’ email addresses (which could be throw-away web-mail addresses used only for registration) and log data. The log data most likely includes IP addresses, click-throughs, cookie stats, etc. The same type of stuff any web site is likely to track and analyze. There are also targeted advertisements using Google AdSense, again, like a lot of other web sites. It’s how they make money and pay for the development and maintenance costs of running their sites. The money has to come from somewhere. It’s common sense.
I’m quite pleased that 43 Things has found a reliable investor in Amazon, and I have little fear that the information I provide to 43 Things, or Amazon, since I do shop at Amazon.com and use A9 frequently, will somehow cause me pain, suffering, and harm. I feel much more trepidation about how the information I provide the government is used and abused. The paranoiacs would do better focusing their short attention on what’s happening to privacy in America at the hands of the Bush Administration.
43things, Salon, Amazon, Privacy