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Two proverbs say it best: Quis custodiet custodes ipsos? ("Who watches the watchers?") and "Absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Cardinal Richelieu understood the value of surveillance when he famously said, "If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged." Watch someone long enough, and you'll find something to arrest -- or just blackmail -- with. Privacy is important because without it, surveillance information will be abused: to peep, to sell to marketers and to spy on political enemies -- whoever they happen to be at the time.

Privacy protects us from abuses by those in power, even if we're doing nothing wrong at the time of surveillance.

We do nothing wrong when we make love or go to the bathroom. We are not deliberately hiding anything when we seek out private places for reflection or conversation. We keep private journals, sing in the privacy of the shower, and write letters to secret lovers and then burn them. Privacy is a basic human need.

The online behavior of a small but growing number of computer users in the United States is monitored by their Internet service providers, who have access to every click and keystroke that comes down the line.

The companies harvest the stream of data for clues to a person's interests, making money from advertisers who use the information to target their online pitches.

The practice represents a significant expansion in the ability to track a household's Web use because it taps into Internet connections, and critics liken it to a phone company listening in on conversations. But the companies involved say customers' privacy is protected because no personally identifying details are released.

The extent of the practice is difficult to gauge because some service providers involved have declined to discuss their practices. Many Web surfers, moreover, probably have little idea they are being monitored.
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The other important contributory factor is the strength and moral independence of the nation's Data Protection Authority, which is resolute in its determination to uphold the following principles enshrined in the Greek constitution:

• Every person's home is a sanctuary
• The private and family life of the individual is inviolable
• Secrecy of letters and all other forms of free correspondence or communication shall be absolutely inviolable

The authority has real teeth. In December 2006 it fined mobile phone company Vodafone 76m euros for bugging more than 100 top Greek officials, including Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis, around the time of the Olympics.

Vodafone's network planning manager in Greece, Costas Tsalikides, was found hanged not long after he informed his superiors he had discovered that spying software had been secretly installed in the company's system.

That little segment was about Greece and how they have the best privacy laws in Europe and the world. Nice to see at least one country still cares about the right of privacy as it seems to erode from so many other countries.

http://www.proxyhost.com/proxyhost-com-advertising-auction/proxyhost-com...

We are auctioning our ad spots, if you're interested please register and bid!

Got an interesting email from Anonymizer today. I used to be a subscriber to their service and this seemed like an interesting offering.

What is IP Blocking?
Because IP addresses are public and attributable, it's easy for Web site administrators to know who visits their site. When you conduct online research, you share potentially confidential information each time you visit a competitor's Web site and reveal your focus of interest.

Furthermore, any target site that recognizes visitors as belonging to a "competitor" can block access, or worse redirect you to cloaked sites designed to display false or outdated information created specifically to mislead and spoil your research.

Even if you are using a non-attributable IP address from Anonymous Surfing™, the volume and pattern of your traffic will raise a red flag of suspect activities to Web administrators who would then be able to block you out.

5 Best Practices for Conducting Competitive Intelligence & Data Harvesting Online

1. Spread traffic across as many days as possible, and at least over a 24 hour period. This keeps the instances of IP addresses seen in the Web analytic logs to a minimum.

2. Spread traffic across many IP addresses. If you are going to connect to the same site repetitively or use robots to harvest data, you need more than a handful of IP addresses. Web administrators will quickly be able to recognize a pattern and block your IP’s from accessing their site.

Ten years later, the online world is a very different place. For one, I don't need to take a book with me every time I log on to keep me entertained while I wait for a new page to load.

For another, despite UK journalist Martin Foley's much-publicised investigation into pedophilia on Skype, and despite MySpace's recent removal of almost 30,000 known sex offenders from its database, most people who use the internet regularly now know that the majority of people they talk to online are as normal as they are.
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It has been argued that 20 years in the future, when virtually everyone has a backlog of life history available online, no one will care about compromising photos taken at university parties, or dramatic outpourings of teenage angst. Better yet, maybe employers, prospective partners and future mothers-in-law will have the savvy to differentiate between reliable information and unqualified hearsay.

It is always interesting to watch the net change and grow, but sometimes it is quite sad to see the consequences when it harms normal people who haven't done anything much different than the rest of society. Our lives are our record now, less and less toleration for mistakes too. It seems like we are just heading straight towards disaster with these sort of ideals. EVERYONE makes mistakes and these days, everyone will know. Society needs to adapt as this article suggests.

Building|Managing|Promoting|Monetizing

Monetizing your proxy basically means ‘making money from your proxy website’. There are many ways to go about monetizing your website and here is what you need to know.

Contextual advertising. This means advertisements appearing on a page which is directly relevant to the webpage content. For example, a website about computers with the word ‘computers’ heavily mentioned, would bring up advertisements on computers. This is done by scanning or browsing through the webpage looking for any keywords.

‘A contextual ad is the advertisement that dynamically appears on a Web site.’

Many companies focus on contextual advertisement with the main one being Google AdSense.

Google AdSense

When enrolled to the AdSense program, you can place advertisements onto your website. These will be from AdSense. Every click made on these ads on your website, you will get a slice of the CPC (cost per click) and Google will take the rest. AdSense is an excellent way of monetizing your website with them currently being the best in the market for contextual advertising.

Building|Managing|Promoting|Monetizing

This following guide will lead you through the steps needed to promote your proxy well and how to gain a lot of traffic from type-ins, search engines and link traffic.

It is split up into paid and non-paid methods of gaining traffic.

Paid (Money Required)

These following methods are methods of gaining traffic by spending money.

1) AdWords

If you choose to add Google AdSense on your website, you are the publisher – you are publishing the ads and are getting paid per click on the ad.

Building|Managing|Promoting|Monetizing

Hopefully you now have your proxy set up and have found a web hosting provider. The following steps are tips on how you can manage your proxy in a professional manner.

1) Maintenance.. nope, no tools required.

Unlike a normal informative website there is not much maintenance to be carried out. This is because you are offering a free service with not a lot, to zero content on your actual website. However, you may want to occasionally browse through your proxy and look around your homepage at any links you may have to find broken links. Contact the person who owns this link on your site to tell them that their broken/dead links are being removed. To interact with other Proxy Users and Owners of how they maintain their websites you can visit the ProxyHost.com Forums.

2) 'Typical', oh no!

Building|Managing|Promoting|Monetizing

The following guide will lead you through the steps involved in creating, managing, promoting, and monetizing a web proxy. It will lead you through the beginning stages, all the way through to the more advanced stages of proxy development.

One thing which should be mentioned is that upon entering the proxy business don’t expect hundreds or even thousands of dollars overnight, although with continued effort this is possible. Don’t settle for an amount - always aim higher. Set goals and meet them, keep doing this forever. If you do not have goals you will never be able to compete with the bigger proxy networks.

What is a Proxy?