Microsoft Wants to Spy on You

May 22, 2007 · by Scott Fradkin

A couple of short articles have surfaced recently outlining what Microsoft wants to do with web browsing in the future. The first, http://www.newscientisttech.com/article.ns?id=mg19426046.400&feedId=being-human_rss20, describes how Microsoft wants to be able to identify everyone browsing on the web. This would be a terrible blow to privacy. The greatest thing about the Internet is the ability to view anything you want with relative anonymity. Now, granted, you’re identifiable via your IP address, but you can get around this by using anonymizer services. Fortunately, all of the ways to gather information that are listed in the article can be bypassed. It mentions that Microsoft is thinking about creating a new cookie program to record pages visited, using your browser’s cache, or using proxy server logs to retrieve browsing data.

Sounds like spyware to me. Users don’t put up with spyware secretly grabbing information off of their computers, and I hope they won’t put up with this either. The easiest way around this is to not use Windows as an operating system. All of these sniffing programs or browser cache reading programs will have to be embedded in Windows or Internet Explorer. The proxy server is a little trickier, but I’d be willing to guess that the vast majority of proxy servers worldwide run on UNIX and not Windows. Even if you don’t use a Windows operating system or don’t use Internet Explorer, I’d still recommend that everybody change their privacy settings on their browser to always ask for acceptance when attempting to set a cookie. I think most non-techie people would be amazed at how many cookies are set when browing the web.

The second interesting article, http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=39662, describes a new “Identity Layer” for the Internet. This in and of itself is a great idea. Being able to know with the click of a mouse button the identity of a person or a website and being able to verify that identity is a good thing. The interesting thing about this is that Microsoft wants to go it alone. It’s intriguing that they want to create the infrastructure and specifications surrounding this technology. There are efforts in place that are working on such a technology (Liberty Alliance, http://www.projectliberty.org/) in a much more open fashion than Microsoft will ever attempt.

Once again, it seems like this is just a way to “own” more of the Internet and more of the data on everyone. It’s great to be able to verify identities, but it has to be done with an open standard for transparency purposes. It’s hard to trust an authority when that authority has a poor track record when dealing with personal privacy. Unfortunately, Microsoft has so much clout and market share that they seem to be able to muscle their way into everything they take on.

I challenge everybody to be more vigilant when browsing and to think about how their data is used online. Things won’t change unless everybody is aware of what happens to their data.

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