Time Magazine just ran a story describing how that invasion of your privacy works and what it can mean to you. Embedded in the 'cookie' is an identifying number, like a cyberfingerprint, that alerts a server to your presence. Whoever sent the cookie can monitor where you go on the Web, what you click on, what you read, what you buy and what you don't buy. A tremendous amount of personal-data collection is going on. The Federal Trade Commission is exploring these issues now, and Congress needs to do much more to understand these problems so that it can protect your privacy as much as possible.
Privacy is like freedom.
It's easy to take for granted. It's easy to lose. It's almost impos- sible to get back once you've lost it. New technology is providing so many ways that you can lose it that the government and society must be far more vigilant in respecting privacy than it has been the past few years. As always, I am interested to hear what you think about the privacy issues I have discussed in this newsletter.