XHow To Use This SiteX First Time User Returning Clients Client Agreement	The End of Privacy Adam L. Penenberg, Forbes Magazine THE PHONE RANG AND A STRANGER CRACKED SING-SONGY AT THE OTHER END OF the line: "Happy Birthday." That was spooky--the next day I would turn 37. "Your full name is Adam Landis Penenberg," the caller continued. "Landis?" My mother's maiden name. "I'm touched," he said. Then Daniel Cohn, Web detective, reeled off the rest of my "base identifiers"--my birth date, address in New York, Social Security number. Just two days earlier I had issued Cohn a challenge: Starting with my byline, dig up as much information about me as you can. "That didn't take long," I said. "It took about five minutes," Cohn said, cackling back in Boca Raton, Fla. "I'll have the rest within a week." And the line went dead. In all of six days Dan Cohn and his Web detective agency, Docusearch.com, shattered every notion I had about privacy in this country (or whatever remains of it). Using only a keyboard and the phone, he was able to uncover the innermost details of my life--whom I call late at night; how much money I have in the bank; my salary and rent. He even got my unlisted phone numbers, both of them. Okay, so you've heard it before: America, the country that made "right to privacy" a credo, has lost its privacy to the computer. But it's far worse than you think. Advances in smart data-sifting techniques and the rise of massive databases have conspired to strip you naked. The spread of the Web is the final step. It will make most of the secrets you have more instantly available than ever before, ready to reveal themselves in a few taps on the keyboard. For decades this information rested in remote mainframes that were difficult to access, even for the techies who put it there. The move to desktop PCs and local servers in the 1990s has distributed these data far and wide. Computers now hold half a billion bank accounts, half a billion credit card accounts, hundreds of millions of mortgages and retirement funds and medical claims and more. The Web seamlessly links it all together. As e-commerce grows, marketers and busybodies will crack open a cache of new consumer data more revealing than ever before (see box, p. 188). It will be a salesman's dream--and a paranoid's nightmare. Adding to the paranoia: Hundreds of data sleuths like Dan Cohn of Docusearch have opened up shop on the Web to sell precious pieces of these data. Some are ethical; some aren't. They mine celebrity secrets, spy on business rivals and track down hidden assets, secret lovers and deadbeat dads. They include Strategic Data Service (at datahawk.com) and Infoseekers.com and Dig Dirt Inc. (both at the PI Mall, www.pimall.com). Cohn's firm will get a client your unlisted number for $49, your Social Security number for $49 and your bank balances for $45. Your driving record goes for $35; tracing a cell phone number costs $84. Cohn will even tell someone what stocks, bonds and securities you own (for $209). As with computers, the price of information has plunged. You may well ask: What's the big deal? We consumers are as much to blame as marketers for all these loose data. At every turn we have willingly given up a layer of privacy in exchange for convenience; it is why we use a credit card to shop, enduring a barrage of junk mail. Why should we care if our personal information isn't so personal anymore? Well, take this test: Next time you are at a party, tell a stranger your salary, checking account balance, mortgage payment and Social Security number. If this makes you uneasy, you have your answer. "If the post office said we have to use transparent envelopes, people would go crazy, because the fact is we all have something to hide," says Edward Wade, a privacy advocate who wrote Identity Theft: The Cybercrime of the Millennium (Loompanics Unlimited, 1999) under the pseudonym John Q. Newman. You can do a few things about it (see box, p. 186). Give your business to the companies that take extra steps to safeguard your data and will guarantee it. Refuse to reveal your Social Security number--the key for decrypting your privacy--to all but the financial institutions required by law to record it. Do something, because many banks, brokerages, credit card issuers and others are lax, even careless, about locking away your records. They take varied steps in trying to protect your privacy (see box, p. 187). Some sell information to other marketers, and many let hundreds of employees access your data. Some workers, aiming to please, blithely hand out your account number, balance and more whenever someone calls and asks for it. That's how Cohn pierced my privacy.       Next Page
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