AFFIRMATIVE-CONSUMER/INTERNET-SIGNIFICANCE 351

OTHER FORMS OF ELECTRONIC COMMERCE ARE PRIVACY THREATS

"SMART CARD" IS BECOMING POPULAR AND IS ONLY CREATING IT EASIER TO ACCESS INDIVIDUALS PERSONAL INFORMATION

Ann Cavoukian, Ph. D, Info. and Privacy Commission in Ontario, and Don Tapscott, Alliance for Converging Technologies, 1997; WHOKNOWS ,EE2001mfp p. 77-78

Smart cards are plastic cards, typically the size of a credit card, containing one or more tiny microchips. The microchip is what makes the card "smart," transforming it into a miniature computer that can collect, store, and often process data. Invented more than 20 years ago by Roland Moreno, smart cards are now beginning to gain more popularity in North America, with Visa and MasterCard having recently announced that they will be implementing smart card technology in future cards. Smart cards may be used as either a technology of privacy or a technology of surveillance, depending on whether the information collected is encrypted, whether it resides only on the card itself (privacy-protective), or is transmitted to a central database (facilitating tracking and monitoring of your activities). Take the example of a health smart card that contains your complete medical history. A self-contained record might be very useful to have on you in an emergency, but would you want all the details of your medical records transmitted to some central location, accessible by network, where countless others unknown to you could have access to that information?

EMAIL IS UNCONFIDENTIAL

Ann Cavoukian, Ph. D, Info. and Privacy Commission in Ontario, and Don Tapscott, Alliance for Converging Technologies, 1997; WHO KNOWS, EE 2001 -mfp p. 138

Many people operate under the mistaken belief that email, much like the mail they send through the post, is confidential and secure. In reality, the security of e-mail has been compared to the security of a postcard: both are open and accessible to being read by third parties. In Protect Your Privacy, William Stallings, a noted computer communications expert, asks: "When you write a personal letter to your doctor, lawyer, or lover, do you use a postcard? When you mail important documents to your accountant or business colleague, do you leave the envelope unsealed? Few people would answer yes to such questions .... Yet millions of people use electronic mail for all kinds of messages and documents without giving a thought to privacy."10

FREE EMAIL USE TAKES PERSONAL DATA FROM YOU

R.S. Murthi New Straits Times (Malaysia), February 27, 2000 SECTION: In-site; Pg. 4 TITLE: Protect your privacy // acs-EE2001

IF you're ever thinking of signing up for a free e-mail account at any of the hundreds of sites that now practically beg you to take advantage of such an offer, be careful. You might just be giving away precious personal information that companies offering such a service should be paying you for in the first place. After all, they compile the statistics and sell them to big corporations looking for ways to market all kinds of product online.

BANNER ADS CAPTURE PERSONAL INFORMATION OF BROWSERS TO THAT PAGE

Business Week, February 28, 2000; Pg. 174 TITLE: TIME TO MOVE ON INTERNET PRIVACY // acs-EE2001

New technology makes it all too easy to capture intimate data from the Web. Banner ads can now grab any personal data placed on the page on which they appear. A person looking up ''colon cancer'' on a medical Web site, for example, may unwittingly have that fact transferred via a company's banner ad. It's downright creepy. And it makes promises of privacy by a Web site completely specious. E-Loan Inc., one of the largest online mortgage companies, vows to keep financial data from consumers secure. It runs a cookie-free site. But E-Loan's partners do have cookies that zoom into people's computers and track them the instant people click onto their sites.