Subject: Fw: Search Engine Privacy Issues

From: "Todd S. Glassey - ELN" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 May 1999 08:51:53 -0700

FYI - Privacy Issues

----- Original Message -----
From: Dave Sweigert <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Sent: Monday, May 10, 1999 7:39 AM
Subject: Search Engine Privacy Issues

> Note: From www.jya.com
>
> http://www.jya.com
> [crypto fanatic site]
>
> "Web sites are examined continuously by "search engines" which generate
> catalogues of their contents. "Alta Vista" and "Hotbot" are prominent
public
> sites of this kind. NSA similarly employs computer "bots" (robots) to
> collect data of interest. For example, a New York web site known as
JYA.COM
> (http://www.jya.com/cryptome) offers extensive public information on
Sigint,
> Comint and cryptography. The site is frequently updated. Records of access
> to the site show that every morning it is visited by a "bot" from NSA's
> National Computer Security Centre, which looks for new files and makes
> copies of any that it finds."
>
> -- Duncan Campbell in Interception Capabilities 2000, released May 6, 1999
>
> 8 May 1999
>
> This site's host, AOL PrimeHost, has initiated a new snooping feature
which
> we didn't ask for, wasn't consulted on and find obnoxiously
> privacy-invasive: our access log now automatically shows what URL was
> visited just prior to accessing a file here. In the case of those coming
> from search engines, it gives the topics and/or keywords the visitor
entered
> for searching. Here're samples (addresses xxx-ed. The second is the NSA
> daily bot - note its prudent use of a proxy gateway - which is as welcome
as
> meat-hunks):
>
> xxxxx - - [03/May/1999:01:17:55 -0400] "GET /bombmake.htm HTTP/1.1" 200
> 33094
>
"http://infoseek.go.com/Titles?qt=how+to+make+a+bomb&win=_search&oq=bomb+mak
> ing&sv=M6&lk=noframes&col=WW&cll=0&st=10" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE
> 4.01; Windows 98)"
> xxxxx - - [03/May/1999:08:00:39 -0400] "GET /crypto.htm HTTP/1.0" 200
27266
> "" "Mozilla/4.04 [en] (WinNT; U)  via proxy gateway  CERN-HTTPD/3.0
> libwww/2.17"
> Since we don't know who has access to our logs, and have to assume they
are
> many (see below), keep in mind the beneficial use of an anonymizer and
hope
> that the anonymizer is not compromised -- a long shot according to recent
> news reports.
>
> PrimeHost is being bought by Verio we're informed, so it's going to get
> worse as the millionaire-wannabes race to meet "business market demand"
for
> snooping on unwary consumers, having learned the lessons of success while
> pigging out on mega-sales to world's intelligence agencies snooping on
> citizens, like IBM , HP, Lotus, Netscape and Microsoft -- see:
> http://jya.com/ic2000-text.htm.
>