Social Control and Surveillance of the Modern Society in Relation to Panoptic Theories

Finding Personal Information

There are many reasons to want online anonymity be it for the content you're looking at, private emails, purchasing goods or illegally downloading amongst many others.

I decided to look into how easy it is to gain information on other people online.

As an example, I have used a site called whois.domaintools.com, I looked how easily I could acquire information on somebody else. Once on the site, minus the www, you can search for the information linked to a certain domain, Greg's was my example to hand.

I felt the need to not post Greg's full home address although I found it within seconds. From this information posted, I could track down Greg through a variety of online resources such as Facebook, Twitter and Google Maps. Anyone could watch over Greg through these ways and use the information how they saw fit.

"When buying a domain, if it's unallocated – meaning that it's free to be sold by any domain registration company – it's a good idea to pick a registrar that will register it on your behalf. Their address will then appear in the domain's Whois record."

 This seems as though it would be beneficial to anyone looking to have their own website, but with privacy considered, if that was required by the owner.

"You may be tempted to get round this problem by using a false address. However, the one that appears in the Whois record is usually the one you gave when you entered your credit card details to buy the domain. Because of this, it pays to ask if you can use a PO Box number to cover your tracks.
This service currently costs £63 per year (or £51 for six months) from Royal Mail. If you only need the address to register the domain, you can let the PO Box lapse afterwards."

 Another solution would be to register a PO Box as suggested, to bypass any privacy issues.

Your Online Life, Permanent as a Tattoo

Recently I've been watching a lot of Ted Talks, on pretty much anything that seems interesting such as someone who is insanely good with a yo-yo, but this talk really got my attention.

It runs with my theme of internet anonymity, although more focused on how you build up an internet identity, teaching you that everything you do online is logged forming, as Enriquez says an 'electronic tattoo'. He goes on to suggest that we should be very wary of what is posted online as it can't be retracted, it gets added to the pool of data already present, which will be present for years.

He also references immortality in his talk and relates that to the Ancient Greeks, which I found very interesting and hadn't thought about the information in the sense it will be available forever.