For all the discussion about how the Internet is stripping consumers of whatever thin veil of privacy they have left in this world, analysts have failed to recognize just how ineffective most of these data-gathering systems have been. The articles blurb is a little misleading since the data gathering went very well, they just had problems getting marketeers to pay a premium for the collected data. It may be acceptable to lie about your age at a cocktail party, but don't try it with America Online's popular ICQ instant messaging service. In response to a tough new online child privacy law that went into effect two weeks ago, ICQ is forcing members under the age of 13 to forfeit their accounts. All rights reserved.
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This was all done with Frontier 7.0.1 and BBEdit on a Macintosh .