Privacy, Schmivacy. We’ll Hide Your Stuff in Plain Sight.

February 3rd, 2006 | by Craig |

I was a customer of 3 Rivers (phone, Internet, satellite TV) for quite a while, Back in the Day™. When they first brought the Intarweb to Ennis, I was the first member of the general public to have a peek in the CO to see the bright shiny terminal servers and Das Blinkenlights and to get an account. (”Do you need our installation disks?” “Hell no! I’ve got Telix, ZModem, and a boatload of FTP sites. As long as I can get to a shell, I’ll do just fine, thankyouverymuch!”1)

I got to know one of their tech guys pretty well, and whenever he came to Ennis, we’d get together and shoot the shit talk business. I remember a discussion at the Ennis Pharmacy about the latest version of Netscape having a built-in VRML browser. We both thought it was very cool, but couldn’t think of any good use for Joe User. Remember VRML? Thought not.

Be that as it may (and I doubt it was) I always got the impression from my friend that 3 Rivers may have not had all their ducks quite in a row when it came to being an ISP. It wasn’t long before he left the company.

All that is leading up to this: If I were still a 3 Rivers customer, I think I’d be PO’d in the extreme, if I found this available to the web browsing public.

It’s not that it gives out a ton of sensitive information, but a determined user with nefarious ideas could probably go through the information and, at the very least, figure out when J. Random 3Rivers User is at the computer; and from there, a determined person could make a reasonable guess as to work shifts, etc.

I’m not a 3 Rivers customer any more, but if I were, I think I’d be giving them a call.

(H/T: You know who you are. If you want the credit, I’ll surely pass it along, but I thought you might like to remain anonymous for now.)

[UPDATE:]  OK, it was Dave who gets the coveted H/T.

1I’m toying with the idea of adding TND-style footnotes to my posts. Whaddaya think?

  1. 7 Responses to “Privacy, Schmivacy. We’ll Hide Your Stuff in Plain Sight.”

  2. By david on Feb 3, 2006 | Reply

    No credit necessary — and besides, you’ve got the historical association to give this post some heavy cred!

  3. By Chad on Feb 3, 2006 | Reply

    I remember VRML. VRML was pretty fricken cool.

  4. By Craig on Feb 3, 2006 | Reply

    No question about that; and totally fricken useless for Joe User.

  5. By Jeff on Feb 4, 2006 | Reply

    Strangely enough, I had a class last year where I had to write some VRML. I thought I was in UM’s CS department for a while there.

  6. By dogette on Feb 4, 2006 | Reply

    . . . and then I come over here tonight and find all kinds of posts here, all the sudden, like a deluge. But like, what the hell are TND-style footnotes anyway? And that cat thing, oh man. This is that new stream o’ consciousness commenting. Not a thing to do with this post, really.

  7. By Craig on Feb 4, 2006 | Reply

    I’m nothing if not flaky and inconsistent.

  8. By Jim - PRS on Feb 4, 2006 | Reply

    1. If I came across that stuff, there would be no problem, because it is written in a foreign language.

    2. As for the TND-style footnotes, you need wild colors and dog poop posts as a proper background.

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