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Beware of the spy network

You might be giving away more personal information than you ought to while booking a ticket online or filling a form at a store, warns GEETA PADMANABHAN

PHOTO: BIJOY GHOSH

SPAM BOOM You've got too many unsolicited mails? Who's been giving away your e-mail id?

Ashwini sounds frantic. "I wrote down a complaint at a bargain store, and without thinking, filled the columns for phone number, e-mail and address. Since then I've been getting telemarketing calls. The girls were evasive when I asked where they got my number from. But I'm sure it's from the complaint book. My personal information is being sold!"

Ashwini's fears are legitimate, considering that her number is not listed in the directory and she can't remember leaving it with anyone except friends.

Stay-at-home citizens are the worst hit by this assault on privacy. "I get half a dozen ad calls daily," says Natarajan. "From insurance agents, banks and businesses. One guy was promoting a pharmacy. How do they all know I have a Zen or that I buy a lot of medicines?"

Your own making?

"Who is to blame?" asked Desikan of the Consumer Association of India. "You fill up all those `optional' boxes in an account-opening form. If the transaction is valid without it, why ask for it in the first place? Be wary of parting with personal information." Every time you make a purchase, you give away your address, phone number, credit card information and preference for the product. Companies have been collecting and warehousing such data for ages. All this is safe, you presume. But businesses, clearly, don't always care about consumer confidence.

The same happens online too. "When you search, chat, shop, subscribe to newsletters, visit a website, buy online, apply for a membership or an online course, your privacy fades away," says Sriram, Founder-President, Launchpad Ventures. "Cookies embedded without your knowledge or consent and web bugs read what you read." Hundred per cent privacy in an online activity? Don't buy that story, especially now when we hear of a new cyber crime a day.

Job-hopping employees exchange info stored in their digital diaries and cell phones. Your mobile phone SP has your particulars. By site-tracking your Internet habits, one can draw your personality map, with flags pinned on the books you read, movies you watch, places you travel to. There is key-logging software that can show what keys you punch and for how long. If you chat regularly, you are a perfect target for telemarketing. Truly scary!

There is the "egocasting" on your blogs: your name, age, profession, what you want, whom you'd like to see the last of... In fact, a police dossier will have much less. It is only a matter of time before a prospective employer trolls your blog to know the "real" you as opposed to the "resume" you. Says Sriram: "Some companies have content-checking software to monitor e-mails, phone calls, voice-mail and web activities of employees."

Every morning, you open your inbox (it greets you by name!) to clean up the spam. By evening, you need the broom again. Mails repeatedly ask you to join SMS networks. Neither you nor the people checking you out are anonymous any more. We are all in the public eye all the time.

So what happens to your idea of private space? In fact, for all the privacy you have, you could be a billboard in Hampankatta.

"It's an open society," says Sriram. "If others have your information, you can get theirs too. It's a borderless world. You can't really say your privacy is invaded." Truth is, your physical, mental and emotional spaces are shrinking. Fewer people recognise your right to your own time, right to do absolutely nothing. You read and react, but don't get time to reflect.

How about a knock-free, honk-free day? A dead doorbell, a silent landline and an exhausted mobile. No chain-mails or "funny" forwards, no online invitations that take years to download. No shrieking TVs. You could use the time to think about privacy issues. And realise the benefits of staying unconnected.

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