Netscape and privacy

[Michael Froomkin]

With all respect to you and to Netscape (I am one who thinks that the
Netscape participation on this list has reflected very well on the
participants and the company), I think that the reply "we only collect IP
addresses" is not fully responsive to the issue.  While I recognize that
there are implementations that assign a new IP address to every login, I
understand the current norm to be static IP addresses.  I sure have one. 
Thus, if you keep a file of my IP address, and a fact about that address,
you have a database that can be purchased and correllated with another DB,
which links IP to somehting else, eg telephone numbers (perhaps from a
contest run on the internet?).  Pretty soon we are at serious
profiling.... 

****   PLEASE NOTE NEW E-MAIL ADDRESS: froomkin at law.miami.edu  *********

A. Michael Froomkin        | +1 (305) 284-4285; +1 (305) 284-6506 (fax)
Associate Professor of Law | 
U. Miami School of Law     | froomkin at law.miami.edu
P.O. Box 248087            | http://www.law.miami.edu/~froomkin
Coral Gables, FL 33124 USA | New address, but it's still just as hot here.