Monday, May 07, 2001

New Economy: Privacy Concerns for Google Archive
In Usenet's original incarnation, messages posted to newsgroups disappeared within weeks, replaced by other comments on the same topic in what was perceived as an ongoing electronic conversation. When Deja.com, then called Deja News, began archiving messages in 1995 and making them searchable, there were protests by those who felt the bulletin boards were never intended to be permanent.

In response, Deja made it possible for users to exclude their postings from its archive by typing the phrase "X-No-archive: yes" at the beginning of a message. With that change, and as Deja subsequently shifted its business model toward consumer- written product reviews and trimmed its public Usenet archive, the privacy issue faded to the background.

Google's acquisition of the archive, however, not to mention a mass-audience popularity that Deja never achieved, may revive some of those privacy concerns. Although Google may be preserving an important historical resource — an effort that some have lauded — the company is also making the record of this "human conversation" accessible in ways that its participants may not have been able to anticipate.

Some of the messages on Usenet involve caustic personal attacks — or equally vitriolic defenses against those attacks. Others display ill-conceived opinions, rash statements or embarrassing late-night rants. And all of it is now searchable by entering a key word, a date range or a name. Postings include a name and e-mail address; the text of messages can also be searched to see if someone is mentioned by name.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/07/technology/07NECO.html?pagewanted=all

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