U.S. government hunting for customer records, stymied by Amazon
By Matt Jansen
It’s easy to forget that every purchase made online creates a unique record stored on a remote server somewhere. Follow enough of those footprints and it’s possible to learn a lot about someone, including insight into their buying habits, location and hobbies. In 2006, the U.S. Attorney’s office ordered Amazon to turn over records for thousands of customers who had purchased books from a reseller on Amazon’s system. While pursuing their case the government decided civil liberty was secondary to . . .
. . . gaining incriminating evidence, but several months later they were able to narrow their request down to 120 customers. Also in 2006, Google fought to protect search traffic data from the Bush Administration who wanted evidence to use in a court battle over children accessing porn on the Internet.
It’s disturbing to see companies defending civil liberties more than the government, which is supposedly in place to enforce the law of the land. But because computers were designed to track and manipulate data and humans continue to do more business through them, the government continues to see this as an easy source of evidence.
For those who like to keep their secrets (raise your hand if you wear clothes!), here are a few tips to keep your information safe:
- When completing a purchase through a site that feels questionable, use a temporary credit card number. Many banks offer them as a free service. That will at least protect your credit card number, though any other personal information you provide will still be recorded.
- Only use your real name on sites that take your privacy seriously, take a few minutes to skim through their terms of use and look for the keywords third party, and sell data.
- For shady sites you just can’t resist, use the Fake Name Generator
- Don’t put your address and contact info out in the open on social networks like MySpace!
- If you need a free temporary phone number, use Numbr. They’ll forward phone calls to your real phone for up to one month.
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