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Web founder warns against website snooping (Tim Berners-Lee)
CNN Money ^ | 3/13/09 | Jonathan Lynn

Posted on 03/13/2009 2:14:56 PM PDT by xtinct

* Governments, corporations snooping on website visits... * Next big thing on Web is linked data...* Berners-Lee says future of Web is on mobile phones

Surfers on the Internet are at increasing risk from governments and corporations tracking the sites they visit to build up a picture of their activities, the founder of the World Wide Web said on Friday.

Tim Berners-Lee, whose proposal for an information management system at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research CERN 20 years ago led eventually to the World Wide Web, said tracking website visits in this way could build an incredibly detailed profile of who people are and their habits.

"That form of snooping I think is really important to avoid," he told an anniversary celebration at CERN.

Technology now being developed will make it easier to decide who can see material one posts on the Web, and in what circumstances. For instance people may not want prospective employers to see an album of holiday photos, he said.

Berners-Lee, a British software engineer who is now a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), said innovation on the World Wide Web was speeding up.

"The Web is not all done, it's just the tip of the iceberg," Berners-Lee said. "I am convinced that the new changes are going to rock the world even more."

(Excerpt) Read more at money.cnn.com ...


TOPICS: Computers/Internet; Government; Science
KEYWORDS: bernerslee; government; internet; linkeddata; privacy; snooping; web; www
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1 posted on 03/13/2009 2:14:56 PM PDT by xtinct
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To: ShadowAce

ping


2 posted on 03/13/2009 2:16:32 PM PDT by rabscuttle385 ("If this be treason, then make the most of it!" —Patrick Henry)
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To: xtinct
Tor: anonymity online
3 posted on 03/13/2009 2:19:06 PM PDT by joseph20 (...to ourselves and our Posterity...)
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To: xtinct

Boss? ‘zat you?


4 posted on 03/13/2009 2:20:22 PM PDT by OB1kNOb (Communist China is doing more to foster capitalism in their country than our politicians are doing.)
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To: joseph20
Tor brings plenty of problems. The traffic coming out the connection to the internet which does not get moved on to another Tor branch can be easily sniffed. Illegal activities are very common through such a device, and if any of that is traced to having come out of your cable modem, you can be on the hook for it. Also, expect a ton of traffic to flow through your computer and internet connection, with most of it being reencrypted as it goes back out. This creates a big overhead on your system and connection speed.
5 posted on 03/13/2009 2:23:51 PM PDT by ConservativeMind (Who is now in charge of the "Office of the President-Elect"?)
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To: joseph20
Tor sniffing:

A MYSTERY was solved today that emphasizes a feature of the Tor network that many users either never understood or had forgotten.

On August 30, Swedish computer security researcher Dan Egerstad posted the user names and passwords for 100 email accounts that he had obtained without the owners’ knowledge. He also posted their email servers’ IP addresses.

The information posted was just a sample of at least 1,000 instances he had collected along with thousands of emails belonging to embassy employees, legislators, civil rights workers and others throughout the world.

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/340/1005340/tor-network-exposes-sensitive-information

...To prove his point, he ran SSLstrip on a server hosting a Tor anonymous browsing network. During a 24-hour period, he harvested 254 passwords from users visiting sites including Yahoo, Gmail, Ticketmaster, PayPal, and LinkedIn. The users were fooled even though SSLstrip wasn't using the proxy feature that tricks them into believing they were at a secure site. Sadly, the Tor users entered passwords even though the addresses in their address bars didn't display the crucial “https.” (Marlinspike said he later disposed of all personally identifiable information)...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/19/ssl_busting_demo/

6 posted on 03/13/2009 2:28:58 PM PDT by ConservativeMind (Who is now in charge of the "Office of the President-Elect"?)
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To: xtinct
Technology now being developed will make it easier to decide who can see material one posts on the Web, and in what circumstances. For instance people may not want prospective employers to see an album of holiday photos, he said.

But to do that you need to crack the anonimity of the person looking at your pictures, thus one huge step past the tracking the author is warning about.

7 posted on 03/13/2009 2:34:52 PM PDT by KarlInOhio (Obama: removing the speed limit on the Road to Serfdom)
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To: KarlInOhio

On Facebook, privacy is established to only allow Friends to see your pages and pictures... fact there, as my kids and relatives kids have that feature established


8 posted on 03/13/2009 2:42:39 PM PDT by xtinct ("There's a sucker born every minute." P.T. Barnum)
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To: ConservativeMind
"Also, expect a ton of traffic to flow through your computer and internet connection, with most of it being reencrypted as it goes back out. This creates a big overhead on your system and connection speed."

That's only true if you set up your system as a Tor node.

Using the Tor button extension with Firefox, you are only using Tor when you click the button in Firefox. Otherwise, the service is not active.
9 posted on 03/13/2009 2:43:51 PM PDT by joseph20 (...to ourselves and our Posterity...)
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To: ConservativeMind

That’s phishing. Logging in with username/password to a site that doesn’t use SSL or HTTP-S will send your login credentials over the wire in plain text. That is not an issue with Tor at all.


10 posted on 03/13/2009 2:45:12 PM PDT by joseph20 (...to ourselves and our Posterity...)
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To: ConservativeMind
"The traffic coming out the connection to the internet which does not get moved on to another Tor branch can be easily sniffed."

Sure, it can be sniffed. But the originator is still unknown. Tor offers ANONYMITY, not privacy.
11 posted on 03/13/2009 2:45:51 PM PDT by joseph20 (...to ourselves and our Posterity...)
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To: xtinct

This whole article is crap. Al Gore created the internet!


12 posted on 03/13/2009 2:54:42 PM PDT by ChinaThreat (3)
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To: joseph20

Why would knowing the originator matter when you have someone’s name, password, and the website they are visiting they gave that to?


13 posted on 03/13/2009 2:59:12 PM PDT by ConservativeMind (Who is now in charge of the "Office of the President-Elect"?)
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To: joseph20

What this does is give anyone using Tor the same problem they would have using an unencrypted Wi-Fi access point.


14 posted on 03/13/2009 3:00:12 PM PDT by ConservativeMind (Who is now in charge of the "Office of the President-Elect"?)
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To: ConservativeMind

Tor does not claim to offer privacy. Tor does not offer privacy.

If someone sends their username and password in plain text across the Internet, that’s not the fault of Tor. Solution: Don’t send your username/password across the Internet without encryption (i.e. https).

What Tor offers is ANONYMITY. Do you understand?


15 posted on 03/13/2009 3:09:40 PM PDT by joseph20 (...to ourselves and our Posterity...)
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To: ConservativeMind

I think you are confused as to the difference between anonymity and privacy.


16 posted on 03/13/2009 3:10:09 PM PDT by joseph20 (...to ourselves and our Posterity...)
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To: joseph20

You are not very anonymous when people know the sites you are visiting and have copies of your cookies and unencrypted name and passwords to sites like Free Republic.

It’s easy to find out who someone likely is when a lack of privacy allows personal account information to be known.

Anonymity is almost worthless without privacy.


17 posted on 03/13/2009 3:22:17 PM PDT by ConservativeMind (Who is now in charge of the "Office of the President-Elect"?)
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To: ChinaThreat

lol China...


18 posted on 03/13/2009 3:24:14 PM PDT by xtinct ("There's a sucker born every minute." P.T. Barnum)
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To: joseph20
What you apparently didn't read in my prior posts is that Tor is the perfect conduit for Man in the Middle attacks, even faking the SSL conditions.

Read the articles I posted. There is are no secure names and passwords if you use Tor. You have a much better chance of not having Man in the Middle attacks by simply “trusting” your internet provider.

19 posted on 03/13/2009 3:24:38 PM PDT by ConservativeMind (Who is now in charge of the "Office of the President-Elect"?)
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To: ConservativeMind
"Anonymity is almost worthless without privacy."

You are confused and wrong. Do you send unencrypted username and password credentials to every single website that you visit? I didn't think so.
20 posted on 03/13/2009 3:32:49 PM PDT by joseph20 (...to ourselves and our Posterity...)
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