Technocreep by Thomas P. Keenan Page A

is duckduckgo.com . The folks behind it give a fascinating illustration of how search engines leak personal information about you based on your searches on www.donttrack.us . They illustrate how a Google Search for “herpes” is sent to Google along with your browser and location, which may be used to identify you. 354 This can influence the kind of ads you are shown, as this information follows you around online. Just as you start that big business presentation—ads for herpes treatments appear.
    Creepy tracking by search engines is not just a theoretical vulnerability. Real people have complained about having their privacy invaded in creepy and disturbing ways.
    A man in Canada searched on Google for “CPAP” (continuous positive pressure airway machines, which are used for sleep disorders). In a later surfing session, he was looking at a comic strip that had nothing to do with the medical device and was creeped out to see ads for CPAP devices displayed by Google.
    He filed a complaint with Canada’s Privacy Commissioner who ruled that “Google’s online advertising service used sensitive information about individuals’ online activities to target them with health-related advertisements, contrary to Canadian privacy law.” Google promised to mend its ways. 355
    Check your environment for things that should not be there.
    Earlier in Technocreep , we learned about CreepyDOL, an unobtrusive $57 snooping device that someone could plug into the wall at your favorite coffee shop, airport terminal, or public library. The odds are good it would sit unnoticed there for weeks, intercepting everyone’s Wi-Fi traffic. While you may not have the technical expertise to sweep for bugs, there’s nothing wrong with asking “what’s that?”—whether it’s a box plugged into an outlet or some new icon on your smartphone.
    Be Info-Stingy.
    Many stores routinely ask for your postal code, telephone number, or some other piece of identifying information at the checkout. Savvy Canadians give out H0H 0H0, a valid postal code that happens to belong to Mr. and Mrs. Claus. Americans, of course, tend to rattle off 90210 as their fake zip code. A California woman successfully sued retailer Williams-Sonoma, Inc. for demanding her zip code, then using it to locate her home address. 356 The main reason to “just say no” to that checkout clerk is to continuously remind yourself to be very stingy in giving out any personal details.
    Your refusal here is, however, largely symbolic. Yes, you are ­throwing a small wrench into the store’s data gathering system. However, if they want more information about you, they can go to data brokers who are happy to sell your details. Or, as Target clearly did in the case described earlier in Technocreep , the retailer can simply build its own profile of you, adding data to it every time you use a debit or credit card, subscribe to a mailing list, or redeem an offer of some sort. In the future, if society allows it, stores might use facial recognition or even a TouchDNA test to figure out your identity and track you.
    Here are some ways to be properly parsimonious with your ­information:

    Give out any phone number but your own.
    Actually, it’s probably best to have a small list of bogus numbers memorized so you don’t find yourself at a store trying to return something and struggling to remember what phone number you gave when you made the purchase.
    How to pick your fun number? You might want to think like a movie scriptwriter, and give out a number with the 555 prefix. Since the 1960s, the film and TV industries have been encouraged to avoid inadvertently showing a real subscriber’s number. The numeric range 555-0100 to 555-0199 is officially reserved for fictitious numbers in most North American area codes.
    Or you could be a little cheeky in your choice of fake phone number.
    For a while I passed out the direct private