The Privacy War of Richard Smith Richard M. Smith knows the data snatchers are out there. He wondered whether other hardware-identifying numbers were being copied onto documents created with Microsoft Word. He discovered that the word processing program also contained an electronic marker that was ''stamped'' onto every document he created. Last fall, Smith quit his job at Phar Lap to take a sabbatical and devote himself full-time to privacy issues.
Federal regulators ask for briefings on Web bugs and other online monitoring gizmos.
And e-commerce companies shudder as he exposes the methods they use to track unsuspecting consumers. So much so that last June, Microsoft brought Smith to its campus in Redmond, Wash., to discuss the use of software user ID numbers. But with Smith on the case, they better be. The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.