How Websites Make You Spill Your Secrets

Image: Owning up: Volunteers were more likely to divulge personal information to a less-official-looking website (top), than to an official-looking one (bottom). Credit: Carnegie Mellon University

From Technology Review:

People divulge more sensitive information on sites that look less safe.

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have found that the appearance of website has a big effect on how honestly people answer personal questions put to them by the site. But paradoxically, it turns out we're more likely to spill our secrets on websites that appear less reputable. The way a website phrases questions also affects our willingness to disclose revealing information, the researchers found.

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Will The Next Cold War Be In Cyberspace -- A Commentary

Two Futures Of The Internet: Next Cold War Or Up In The Clouds -- The Guardian

Will the future be cyber-attacks and an uneasy balance of terror or cultural collaboration hosted by Google's servers?

"THE FUTURE", WROTE the novelist William Gibson in a justifiably famous aphorism, "is already here: it's just not evenly distributed".

The challenge is to spot those uneven­ly distributed peeks into our future. The Apple iPad launch provoked a storm of peeking: optimists saw it as a sign that the computer industry had finally got the message that most people can't be bothered with the mysteries of operating systems and software updates and want an information appliance that "just works"; pessimists saw it as a glimpse into an authoritarian world dominated either by governments or a few powerful companies; sceptics saw it as just another product launch.

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The Internet War -- A Commentary

Countries armed with "cyberweapons," according to McAfee.
(Credit: McAfee)

The Internet War -- An Editorial From The Washington Post

THE INTERNET has produced a vast expansion of free speech and access to information around the world. But for China and Russia, it has also become a means for waging a covert war against other nations, including the United States -- a brazen effort to steal secrets and plant malware. For those countries and for a host of other authoritarian regimes, Internet freedom is a threat, to be countered by censorship, the imprisonment of bloggers and domestic spying.

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Update: China Ups the Ante in Internet Row With U.S. -- Wall Street Journal editorial

My Comment: Two must read editorials on how both Russia and China are now using the world wide web to target us.

Remarks On Internet Freedom By Hillary Clinton

Remarks on Internet Freedom -- Hillary Clinton, Real Clear World

The Newseum
Washington, DC
January 21, 2010

Thank you very much, Alberto, for not only that kind introduction but your and your colleagues' leadership of this important institution. It's a pleasure to be here at the Newseum. The Newseum is a monument to some of our most precious freedoms, and I'm grateful for this opportunity to discuss how those freedoms apply to the challenges of the 21st century.

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