The good news is that there's at least one way to keep people who you think have no bloody business knowing about it from learning your online habits - like, say, if you have a thing for a particular adult Web site, for example. The not-so-good news is that preserving this part of your freedom isn't exactly for free - though Montreal-based Freedom.net is banking on that being good news in the long run.
Launched Monday, Freedom.net is what blues legend Howlin' Wolf would call a tail dragger - wiping out the tracks of Internet surfers, for $10 a pop, although users must pay for five accounts at once, with options to spread them over five years or use them all at once. And what will you get for your $50? Among other things, a pseudonym which will hide your true identity, in most cases, plus "powerful cryptography and network technology," says Freedom.net. (www.freedom.net)
Freedom.net's parent, Zero-Technology, also features perhaps the simplest and most engaging privacy statement yet to appear on a Web site: "Zero-Knowledge does not require and, as a matter of policy, does not want to obtain any more information subscribers than absolutely necessary."
It centers around a software called Freedom 1.0, which the company says "works alongside your existing Internet applications to ensure that no one-not even Zero-Knowledge-can compromise your privacy online." The software will let you encrypt and "privatize" your Web browsing, e-mail, chat room activity, newsgroups, and other cyberactivity, as well as claiming to put a stop to spam.
And it says it will stop your personal information from being released "accidentally".
Of course, the company is rather exuberant about Freedom 1.0's potential, as evinced by this remark inside its Web site: "Imagine if the post office could read the contents of your letter and take a snapshot before sending it on its way. Or what if the shopping mall could hire someone to follow you secretly from store to store, recording everything you stopped to look at? Privacy threats just like these are commonplace on the Internet.
"You wouldn't put up with privacy invasions like these in the real world," the statement continues. "Why should you tolerate them online?"
Zero-Knowledge president Austin Hill tells ZDNet the privacy issue will be to the 21st century what civil rights was to the 20th century. "The ability to hide a part of your life is going to be a key facet of browsing the Internet," Hill says. "When we are asked for user information, we can truthfully say we have zero knowledge."
The company and its Freedom 1.0 software are getting rave reviews from at least one privacy advocacy group. "We have been saying for a long time that anonymity is critical to online privacy," says Electronic Privacy Information Center director Marc Rotenberg. "Anything that helps privacy is good."
Even so, ZDNet says, it still isn't enough for other privacy watchdogs. Zero Knowledge has yet to find, for example, a solution for delivering e-commerce transactions anonymously, since users who go to the credit card to do e-business have the problem of instant identification, just like the real world. You may prefer that no one else know you like to play around in the adult Net world, but your credit card will tell someone about it.
And if there's another drawback to Freedom 1.0, though, ZDNet says, it's the fact that the software is designed to re-route data through its own network - thus slowing down Web browsing. Hill, though, says the performance hit is minimal at best.
"Of course, it varies with the numbers of servers you route through," he tells ZDNet, but the more servers you do use, the harder it is for any outside party to track the data.
One way to keep that side effect down is through slow ramping up, ZDNet says. Zero Knowledge plans to admit no more than ten thousand new users per week. ZDNet says interest has been shown from over 70,000 - and growing.
But Rotenberg, while enthusing over Freedom 1.0, says it's just the beginning. "A lot of companies will exploit the user information," he tells ZDNet. "That's why good regulations are needed in addition to the technology component."
Meanwhile, there's another group who have concerns related to Freedom 1.0 - authorities who fear it might compromise their ability to hunt illegal activity online, says the Associated Press.
The AP says Freedom 1.0 may not be absolutely perfect but its apparent thoroughness could "frustrate law enforcement officials trying to track down shady Web users who send abusive e-mail and exchange such material as child pornography and pirated software."
But Junkbusters, a privacy advocate and consulting firm in New Jersey, scoffs somewhat at that idea. "Anonymous speech is inconvenient and sometimes has bad consequences, but if you removed it, we would be living in a very dangerous world," says Junkbusters president Jason Catlett to the AP.
