IAPSB - Internet Anonymity, Privacy, and Security Blog

My Stop Smoking Blog

2007-09-22T11:47:00.000-07:00

I would like to invite you to my new website and Stop Smoking Blog for people who want to Stop Smoking and Quit Forever. This book is a must have for smokers, or for individuals that would like to send it to a smoker they would like to see quit the tobacco habit. Below is a viewing of my index page.

My Stop Smoking Book "Steve" - A Father’s Diary

"The ultimate quit smoking book!"

Will impact everyone who reads it.
Patricia...

Overwhelming, powerful, harrowing experience.
Alice...

“If you are a smoker and have ever thought of quitting, this book is for you. It will give you reasons so compelling that you will never want to light a cigarette for the rest of your life. If you are a non-smoker but could be tempted to start, this book is for you to read immediately. This book is powerful, overwhelming, and hard hitting, yet absolutely truthful and so touching that it may bring you to tears. It will have an impact on everyone who reads it.”
Author: Gabriel Roy

Comments from those who reviewed the book:

Overwhelming, powerful, harrowing experience.
Alice
A powerful story, touching and empathetic. Had a large impact on me emotionally. Most people, if not all, will be affected as well. Will impact everyone who reads it.
Patricia
Very effective at describing the immense pain a smoker goes through when suffering of lung cancer. Its brutality is not for someone who has lost a loved one to lung cancer.
Anonymous

The book is currently in the finalization process and the first printing of 2,000 copies should come off the presses by December 1st of this year, 2007.
Price will be $12.95 plus shipping and handling.

The publisher will pay the shipping and handling for those of you who reserve a copy now by clicking on this link: reserve me a book now
You will get yours by Christmas.

Anonymity

2007-05-04T15:28:00.000-07:00

Anonymity is derived from the Greek word ανωνυμία, meaning 'without a name' or 'name-less', and more originally meaning without law. In colloquial use, the term typically refers to a person, and often means that the personal identity, or personally identifiable information of that person is not known.

More strictly, and in reference to an arbitrary element (e.g. a human, an object, a computer), within a well-defined set (called the "anonymity set"), "anonymity" of that element refers to the property of that element of not being identifiable within this set. If it is not identifiable, then the element is said to be "anonymous".

An example: Suppose that only Alice, Bob, and Carol have the keys to a bank safe and that, one day, the contents of the safe are missing (without the lock being violated). Without any additional information, we do not know for sure whether it was Alice, Bob or Carol that opened the safe; the perpetrator remains anonymous. In particular, each of the elements in {Alice, Bob, Carol} has a 1/3 chance of being the perpetrator. However, as long as none of them has been identified as being the perpetrator with 100% certainty, we can say that the perpetrator remains anonymous.

Anonymity is not an absolute. That is, the degree of anonymity one enjoys may vary. In the above example, if Carol has an ironclad alibi at the time of the perpetration, then we may deduce that it must have been either Alice or Bob who opened the safe. That is, the probability of the elements {Alice, Bob, Carol} of being the perpetrator is now 1/2, 1/2, and 0 respectively. This clearly amounts to a reduction of the perpetrator's anonymity (i.e. although the perpetrator still remains anonymous, it is now more likely than before that (s)he is either Alice or Bob).

The term "anonymous message" typically refers to message (which is, for example, transmitted over some form of a network) that does not carry any information about its sender and its intended recipient. It is therefore unclear if multiple such messages have been sent by the same sender or if they have the same intended recipient.

Sometimes it is desired that a person can establish a long-term relationship (such as a reputation) with some other entity, without his/her personal identity being disclosed to that entity. In this case, it may be useful for the person to establish a unique identifier, called a pseudonym, with the other entity. Examples of pseudonyms are nicknames, credit card numbers, student numbers, bank account numbers, IP addresses. A pseudonym enables the other entity to link different messages from the same person and, thereby, the maintenance of a long-term relationship. Although typically pseudonyms do not contain personally identifying information, communication that is based on pseudonyms is often not classified as "anonymous", but as "pseudonymous" instead. Indeed, in some contexts, anonymity and pseudonymity are separate concepts.

However, in other contexts what matters is that both anonymity and pseudonymity are concepts that are, among other things, concerned with hiding a person's legal identity. In such contexts people may not distinguish between anonymity and pseudonymity.

The problem of determining whether or not the identity of a communication partner is the same as one previously encountered is the problem of authentication.

Means of obtaining anonymity
Anonymity is a result of not having identifying characteristics (such as a name or description of physical appearance) disclosed. This can occur from a lack of interest in learning the nature of such characteristics, or through intentional efforts to hide these characteristics. An example of the former would include a brief encounter with a stranger, when learning the other person's name is not deemed necessary. An example of the latter would include someone hiding behind clothing that covers identifying features like hair color, scars, or tattoos, in order to avoid identification.

In some cases, anonymity is reached unintentionally, as is often the case with victims of crimes or war battles, when a body is discovered in such a state that the physical features used to identify someone are no longer present. Anonymity is not always found in such morbid situations, however. As an example, a winner of a lottery jackpot is anonymous (one of however many play the lottery) until that person turns in the winning lottery ticket. Many acts of charity are performed anonymously, as well, as benefactors do not wish, for whatever reason, to be acknowledged for their action.

There are many reasons why a person might choose to obscure their identity and become anonymous. Several of these reasons are legal and legitimate - someone, for example, who feels threatened by someone else might attempt to hide from the threat behind various means of anonymity. There are also many illegal reasons to hide behind anonymity. Criminals typically try to keep themselves anonymous either to conceal the fact that a crime has been committed, or to avoid capture.

Anonymity and social situations
Anonymity may reduce the accountability one perceives to have for their actions, and removes the impact these actions might otherwise have on their reputation. This can have dramatic effects, both useful and harmful.

In conversational settings, anonymity may allow people to reveal personal history and feelings without fear of later embarrassment. Electronic conversational media can provide physical isolation, in addition to anonymity. This prevents physical retaliation for remarks, and prevents negative or taboo behavior or discussion from tarnishing the reputation of the speaker. This can be beneficial when discussing very private matters, or taboo subjects or expressing views or revealing facts which may put someone in physical, financial, or legal danger (such as illegal activity, or unpopular or outlawed political views).

With few perceived negative consequences, anonymous or semi-anonymous forums often provide a soapbox for disruptive conversational behavior. Some people label those who do this online as Internet trolls.

Relative anonymity is often enjoyed in large crowds. Different people have different psychological and philosophical reactions to this development, especially as a modern phenomenon. This anonymity is an important factor in crowd psychology.

Anonymity, commerce, and crime
Anonymous commercial transactions can protect the privacy of consumers. Some consumers prefer to use cash when buying everyday goods (like groceries or tools), to prevent sellers from aggregating information or soliciting them in the future. (Credit cards are linked to a person's name, and can be used to discover other information, such as postal address, phone number, etc.) When purchasing taboo goods and services, anonymity makes many potential consumers more comfortable with or more willing to engage in the transaction. Many loyalty programs use cards which personally identify the consumer engaging in each transaction (possibly for later solicitation, or for redemption or security purposes), or which act as a numerical pseudonym, for use in data mining.

Anonymity can also be used as a protection against legal prosecution. For example, when committing a robbery, many criminals will obscure their faces to avoid identification. In organized crime, groups of criminals may collaborate on a certain project without revealing to each other their names or other personally identifiable information. The anonymous purchase of a gun or knife to be used in a crime helps prevent linking an abandoned weapon to the identity of the perpetrator.

Issues facing the anonymous
Attempts at anonymity are not always met with support from society. There is a trend in society to mistrust someone who makes an effort to maintain their anonymity. This is often summed up in the statement, "You wouldn't want to stay anonymous unless you had something to hide." The implication is that there is no legitimate reason to obscure one's identity from the world as a whole.

Anonymity sometimes clashes with the policies and procedures of governments or private organizations. In the United States, disclosure of identity is required to be able to vote. In airports in most countries, passengers are not allowed to board flights unless they have identified themselves to some sort of airline or transportation security personnel, typically in the form of the presentation of an identification card.

On the other hand, some policies and procedures require anonymity. According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, "... periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage ... shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures."

Referring to the anonymous
When it is necessary to refer to someone who is anonymous, it is typically necessary to create a type of pseudo-identification for that person. In literature, the most common way to state that the identity of an author is unknown is to refer to them as simply "Anonymous." This is usually the case with older texts in which the author is long dead and unable to claim authorship of a work. When the work claims to be that of some famous author— a common practice in Christian literature— the pseudonymous author is identified as "Pseudo-", as in Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, an author claiming—and long believed—to be Dionysius the Areopagite, an early Christian convert.

Anonymus, in its Latin spelling, generally with a specific city designation, is traditionally used by scholars in the humanities to refer to an ancient writer whose name is not known, or to a manuscript of their work. Very many such writers have left valuable historical or literary records: an incomplete list of such Anonymi is at Anonymus.

In the history of art, many painting workshops can be identified by their characteristic style and discussed and the workshop's output set in chronological order. Sometimes archival research later identifies the name, as when the "Master of Flémalle"—defined by three paintings in the Städelsches Kunstinstitut in Frankfurt— was identified as Robert Campin. The 20th-century art historian Bernard Berenson methodically identified numerous early Renaissance Florentine and Sienese workshops under such sobriquets as "Amico di Sandro" for an anonymous painter in the immediate circle of Sandro Botticelli.

In legal cases, a popularly accepted name to use when it is determined that an individual needs to maintain anonymity is "John Doe." This name is often modified to "Jane Doe" when the anonymity-seeker is female.

The military often feels a need to honor the remains of soldiers for whom identification is impossible. In many countries, such a memorial is named the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

Anonymity and the Press
Most modern newspapers and magazines attribute their articles to individual editors, or to news agencies. An exception is the British weekly The Economist, which may be world's only un-bylined paper.

Anonymity and politics
The history of anonymous expression in political dissent is both long and honourable, as in the Letters of Junius or Voltaire's Candide, or scurrilous as in pasquinades. In the tradition of anonymous British political criticism, the Federalist Papers were anonymously authored. Without the public discourse on the controversial contents of the U.S. Constitution, ratification would likely have taken much longer as individuals worked through the issues. The United States Declaration of Independence, however, was not anonymous. If it had been unsigned, it might well have been less effective. In The Infrastructure of Democracy, John Perry Barlow, Joichi Ito, and other US bloggers express a very strong support for anonymous editing as one of the basic requirements of open politics as conducted on the Internet. Saipansucks.com is an example of an anonymously written website that socially and politically criticizes the United States' Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.

Affordable Web Site Hosting

2007-05-02T11:05:00.000-07:00

Cheap and Affordable Website Hosting
If you are in need of a good reliable web hosting service check out the The Blogspot Blogger Review of LunarPages.com.

I personally went to their office to check them out and highly recommend them.

Affordable Web Site Hosting
Cheap and Affordable Website Hosting
Review LunarPages.com
LunarPages.com

Chess Strategies

2007-03-17T17:19:00.000-07:00

Read and learn Chess at Chess 101

Expandable Post Test

2007-02-15T08:19:00.000-08:00

Here is a test of the Expandable Post

This is just a bunch of text to see how the formatting looks and to try and gain more than one paragraph of text. Hopefully this will do the trick.

The help files at Blog Help, recommend adding, [a href="[data:post.url/]"] (Substitute brackets with "is less than <" and "is greater than >" symbols.) within an anchor tag. The trouble here is that you cannot have, "is less than" or "is greater than" symbols < > inside an anchor tag using the new templates. So much for that.

After some searching I found a helpful article that many are aware of at:
Hackosphere - Expandable Post Summaries
This was very helpful so I am passing it on.

I did tweak the script from Hackosphere to meet my current needs. It is close, but I am also looking for a solution to correct what Blog Help has to offer. When I do find the solution I will post it in order to help others who want this function on their blog site.

Over at:
http://www.bloggerforum.com/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=17327&forum=2
is an article I posted earlier today asking for help with this. If you have the time please feel free to comment either here, their, or both.

This concludes the test of Expandable Post Summaries.

Cousin It

Three Column Scribe Template by Cousin It

2007-02-14T19:48:00.001-08:00

Three column layout using the Scribe template by Todd Dominey.

Adding a number of changes, the Scribe template is redesigned into a three column layout. This should work with most of the new templates available. Feel free to view the source code for this blog site. You will note where I have comments on the changes made to enhance the layout for your own use.

Important:
Save your current template. Make a backup!
A word of caution, I did have trouble editing/saving the source when using "Expand Widget Templates." This could be from my inexperience using the enhanced functions now available in the new templates, I don't know for sure.

As time progresses I will add a step-by-step, full explanation of the changes made.

Best regards,

Cousin It

IAPSB Posting Policies

2007-02-08T18:17:00.000-08:00

Individuals like yourself are what makes this a great community for sharing knowledge, with the freedom of expression.

1. First, never to stop freedom of speech, visitors can comment.
2. Visitors, when adding a comment use some class, avoid foul language.
3. Anyone can post a comment, however posting new blogs requires a Google account. Unfortunately, there is no way around that condition.

IAPSB thanks you for your contributions.

Sincerely,

Staff at IAPSB

Introduction from IAPSB

2007-02-08T14:46:00.000-08:00

In our current environment, everyone wants and needs privacy on the web. While connected to the Internet, no matter where you go, someone could, and most likely is watching you, monitoring your traffic for any number of reasons.It could be someone like your ISP, your employer, a hacker, some company gathering your info to sell, to yet, some other company, even your government may be monitoring traffic patterns while you peacefully surf the web. It makes sense that being anonymous on the Internet means being able to use all of its services with no concern about someone snooping on your personal data.

This involves the issue of privacy in a society that is getting less and less private each and every day. Privacy in everyday life is nothing new, often giving privacy little thought. You buy something at the grocery store, who will ask you for some form of ID? When you send a letter through the mail, the Post Office does not check if the return address is valid. But, who would not be very upset if when you bought something at your local grocery store and you had to show ID? Or, you found out that the mailman had been reading your mail?

With the Internet, privacy for some reason is regarded a lot less normal. Messages are sent as clear text, so that everyone with a little knowledge can read them. Think about that for a minute. You send an Email and anyone can read it, but is it not mail? There is no built-in way to prevent someone else from forging something in your name, so that you cannot prove it was not you. Even worse, data on your own hard disk can be examined by everyone who gains access to your computer. You hear and read about these things happening everyday, another case of identity theft.

This brings up security and why individuals needs to secure their data transfers as well as their computers. There are a number of software programs available for securing networks, computers, and data transfers.

IAPSB (Internet Anonymity, Privacy, and Security Blog) wants individuals be aware of these issues, to help individuals concerned about these issues learn to maintain their anonymity, privacy, and security while connected to the World Wide Web.

Definitions: Anonymity - Privacy - Security

2007-02-08T12:34:00.000-08:00

Definitions of anonymity, privacy, and security.

Anonymity:

an·o·nym·i·ty (ān'ə-nĭm'ĭ-tē)

n. pl. an·o·nym·i·ties

1. The quality or state of being unknown or unacknowledged.

1, One that is unknown or unacknowledged.

Privacy:

pri·va·cy (prī'və-sē)

1. The quality or condition of being secluded from the presence or view of others.

2. The state of being free from unsanctioned intrusion: a person's right to privacy.

3. The state of being concealed; secrecy.

Security:

se·cu·ri·ty (sĭ-kyŏŏr'ĭ-tē)

n. pl. se·cu·ri·ties

1. Freedom from risk or danger; safety.

2. Freedom from doubt, anxiety, or fear; confidence.

3. Something that gives or assures safety, as:

A group or department of private guards: Call building security if a visitor acts suspicious.
Measures adopted by a government to prevent espionage, sabotage, or attack.
Measures adopted, as by a business or homeowner, to prevent a crime such as burglary or assault: Security was lax at the firm's smaller plant.
Measures adopted to prevent escape: Security in the prison is very tight.

4. Something deposited or given as assurance of the fulfillment of an obligation; a pledge.

5. One who undertakes to fulfill the obligation of another; a surety.

6. A document indicating ownership or creditorship; a stock certificate or bond.