stalked

I’ve just had a phone call from someone. “Oh, you’ll be surprised to get this call, I expect”.

yes – I was. Because I had looked at his web site yesterday, and he extracted our IP from his logs (presumably), and discovering that I was a web developer, rang me up to see why I was looking at them, and what I thought of them.

now, I know that web logs catch this information – and indeed, we capture it ourselves, and analyse it. But I would never *ever* dream of phoning someone who had appeared in my web logs – I think that’s a real invasion of privacy.

am I alone?

non sequitur

prompted by this post by drpete, I’m reminded that yesterday we were taking photographs inside and outside the Maul Mall, our nearest retail shopping experience (TM).

while I was taking some photos *outside*, a chap in a suit with a little M&S badge came up to me and said:

“Excuse me – are you having a problem?
You seem to be taking some photographs”

try as we might, neither perlmonger nor I could parse these two comments together. Obviously, I responded that I wasn’t having any problem at all, and that I was indeed taking photographs, and went on my way.

but They don’t like it, do They …

Brave New World (ctd)

“What makes Memletics remarkable is the digital rights management (DRM) scheme it uses on its books. The company’s main product is a training manual that explains the “Memletics advanced learning system” — and if you loan it to a friend, you do so at considerable personal risk. You see, Mimletic prints out your “name, address, telephone number, credit card number, and other information” on every tenth page of the e-book. The truly amazing part is that the company does this with its printed manuals too.”

more here

people sometimes ask me why I won't shop at Tesco

from today’s Guardian

Tesco is quietly building a profile of you, along with every individual in the country – a map of personality, travel habits, shopping preferences and even how charitable and eco-friendly you are. A subsidiary of the supermarket chain has set up a database, called Crucible, that is collating detailed information on every household in the UK, whether they choose to shop at the retailer or not.

read the full article here.

I always wonder why people are so happy to have store cards …