[General Topics] paulsuerth:
it is my opinion that one of the previous posters misrepresented the quote from skyfire's website. they state that the aggregate information although linked to an anonymous or random number may *reveal* your identity, not link to it. i.e. if as a thinking human being i go datamining after i either steal or purchase "anonymous" data from skyfire, the fact that your browsing is all lumped together means that the person 123456 that signed in to the citibank site with xyz123 and then to the att site with abc456 are the same by virtue of that activity being linked. once a dataminer knows those identities are the linked some how, they can start peicing together of peices of information to develop a profile on you. after that, they can backtrace information that positively links a skyfire 123456 identity with the human being that owns the accounts that are coincidentally used by that skyfire identity. skyfire isn't linking your email (or whatever) with their id number, but stating that their id number will concentrate all of your browsing, the same way GMAIL or AIM concentrate your email or IM activity. if a person compromised someone's GMAIL data, i'm certain it would be at least equally damaging. to be noted, there is a measure of security through obscurity; skyfire isn't popular yet, and you have to go out and really work to get at it; unlike a gmail account; or comm programs automatically or frequently installed on you folks that use windows computers.

as a sidenote i'm always amused by folks that want their online activity to be completely black, but think nothing of walking through the bank's front door without disguising themselves or pay for their books at B&N or borders with their bank card... or those meds you buy at the pharmacy with your bank card and your frequent shopper discount card... all that is used for much the same reasons. merchants of all stripes want to get better, more recent and more accurate demographic data so they can target you with their advertising and products more efficiently (= cheaply) in order to maximize the return (the dollars you give them) on their product investment.

i decided long ago that i am one person, the same person on line as i am in real life and take equivocal measures to protect my privacy in both scenarios.

my electronic and physical methods of protection are the maximum allowed by law in my locale; and i don't begrudge a company or government availing itself of freely and legally obtainable information, nor do i do anything i'm ashamed of and wish to hide from my actions, but that may be because its really hard to make me feel shame... >:)

fwiw, they're giving you a free service and collecting demographic data on you. the technology clearly statest that they cache the webpages in order to trick you into thinking that its faster, by doing this they have something worth selling in order to fund their service. you get a better rendering of complex sites, faster delivery times when requesting a page and they get to offer you and a other merchants valuable (relatively speaking) information. if you don't like it, don't use it. same as lottery, religion, sex, politics or opinions. have any that you want, just stay out of the decisions i make in mine.