I met a old woman on the street who was very friendly and seemingly honest. We were enjoying a nice conversation as we openly traded personal information. Then, we were approached by a masked man. We ran as fast as we could. There was something in us that didn't trust presence of a person who didn't want to be recognized for what he was.

Almost every web page visited acquires information that many internet users seem to believe or wish was private and protected. Some services tell you about what they do and some don't. Consider the Yahoo privacy statement at http://privacy.yahoo.com/privacy/us/ as just one example.

Yahoo requires registration with considerable verifiable personal information. It states how it uses, shares, and sells that along with extensive other information gained in recording all activity of a computer connected to Yahoo. This is summed with their statement "Once you register with Yahoo! and sign in to our services, you are not anonymous to us." It is a wonder anyone concerned with security of their privacy would even use Yahoo or any other similar service. Do you have any idea what Google is doing right now as you play in their backyard?

And yet, we hear of those who fear our Chat Room, its Library, and this Forum's very limited noting of isp's, ip numbers, simple user registration, temporary transcripts of room posting, and ban ability. If such raises concern, the practices of Yahoo similar services ought scare the hell out of them.

Knowing a persons ip number really doesn't tell much about them but the location of their isp service, often a main office location. Dial up ip numbers change on each call. Cable and DSL numbers are usually fixed but change from time to time. With a networked service, the ip number is not to an individual's computer but to a section of that service and the internal individual address is masked. Because of that, large isp's such as AOL don't present much at all about individuals. Isp's trade, buy, and sell blocks of ip numbers among them. The dated information is not always accurate.

Our Chat Room on the EWC system displays for moderators a partial ip address as participants enter. That can usually be filled out with more precise information of varying accuracy for users who visit the Library and Forum. This is done through an external counter service. Information gained may include a isp host name and user ip number, Country, Region, City, and internet service provider, operating system, monitor resolution, the address from which they linked to us, and which of our pages were visited and when.

That one's incorrectly presumed mask of anonymity is transparent ought not be of major concern. Why a service peers through it and what is done with the view acquired should be. We have two uses for the information. One is use of statistical summaries over time to aid configuring the library and forum. Knowing in aggregate who our users are and what they do is helpful to better fit the sites both to our purpose and their interests.

You can take a look at examples of the sort of information we gather by connecting to the counter and analysis system we use at http://www.statcounter.com/ On that page, click "Live Demo". Then try all the options between the words "Statistics" and "Recommended", and you will see what we get.

Our other use is to aid chat room moderating. An example of that would be ensuring chat room participants are who they say they are rather than engaged in surreptitious impersonation. That has happened seldom, but when it did, those attempting it were quickly removed.

The chat room also records everything publicly posted (not private messaging). The record is available only to moderators who are in the room. It is maintained for periods varying from a few days to perhaps a month. That duration depends on the larger chat system maintenance and is out of our control. It allows moderators who are in the room know what occurred while absent.

Do we do anything else with the information besides that mentioned here? No! Now, that assumes our moderators are trustworthy. it might help to take a look at our Chat Room moderator solicitation which lists criteria for becoming one. In particular, note the one stating "Possess an ethical sense which dictates respecting privacy of personal information". Sure, some people wear masks. Others are more honorable. Those are the ones we try to be and deal with.

Does anyone else collect information through contacts with our system, or any other internet use for that matter? You bet they do, or are at least able to if they choose! Almost all web sites collect the same information we do. Your internet service provider and any of a few or maybe even 50 or so domain name servers your transmissions traverse can record any of the data passing through them if they are of a mind. They usually are, but not because they care about you. They often maintain caches of frequently accessed information to ease load on their system. Are they bound by privacy protecting ethical considerations? Well yes, according to international treaties. But consider this...

The internet operates under standards approved by W3C, the World Wide Web Consortium. That is an arm of the International Telecommunications Union, itself a function of the United Nations. All members of the UN are signatories to the ITU treaties. Its standards are thus base law to which all national laws must correspond. The original acceptable use standards for the internet are still in place. They specify it exists to provide unrestricted worldwide communication. They further state that use for profit is specifically prohibited. In sum, the internet exists by law for open sharing of information and its use for monetary gain is illegal. Have you noticed any commercial use of the internet? You have huh? So much for ethical and legal considerations.

It might be enlightening to do some internet research on "Echelon", an intelligence gathering service operating under joint auspices of the US, Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. It is claimed all electronic communication of any sort; radio, internet traffic, email, telephone calls, voice or text, local or international, passes through their super computers, is scanned for key words, and then possibly held for further analysis.

How about snooping which is not publicly acknowledged or known? The free Google Earth can focus on my home and delineate latitude and longitude variance down to an area of six centimeters squared. (That is about two and a half inches for gringos). Earth allows looking at the output of live web cams placed at strategic spots in large cities. That is what I can see with my free version. Any guesses on what others with more money, interest, and clout might view on similar software and systems of which you and I are unaware? Can you say "government"?

My personal experience with what some called paranoia has been that it usually turned out to be the truth others preferred not to recognize. Back to that encounter with a masked man. You can figuratively emulate him if you want and don't mind people running away from you.

There are many services available which will mask your ip information. One of them is Anonymouse. It allows web surfing, emailing, and group posting without revealing ip information. It is fast, easy, free, requires no registration, and is at http://anonymouse.org/anonwww.html. Testing here has shown it works.

Another post on this forum is titled "Dissident Blogger Handbook". The latter chapters of that go into great detail on how to work toward maintaining internet anonymity. It is well worth reading if that interests you.

Nothing is sure. Instead of running, we could have beat the hell out of that masked man and yanked off his identity obscuring cover. I wonder, however, if that nice old woman I was talking with might have been his partner.