More like your fat cousin Tony

Is it just me, or do sites like this one and this one seem like covers for some entity creating a database? I'm not accusing anyone of anything, but look at this from the first site:

Note: Most authorities agree that the full birth name as recorded on your birth certificate is the name that must be used for all calculations involving name. Nicknames, changed names including marriage name changes do not dilute the importance of the name given to you by your parents.

"Only your full address and estimated annual income can be used to formulate the Hebrew meaning of your name. Also, how much would you estimate you spend per year on entertainment?"

Sometimes I have an overactive imagination, so don't let what follows bother you too much.

I don't know how the particulars of cookies and all that work, but I know they can leave a little file in your settings that remembers stuff. Usually it's benign, like how your name and password magically fills in at YouTube, but it doesn't have to be. I've deleted cookies that were set to expire in 100 years and had names that were 11 random characters or something.

I'll bet it's not much for a mediocre coder with the right knowledge to plant a cookie in IE, set to the default settings of course, that could remember the name you put in on one site, and the birthdate you put in on the other, and then put them together and send it off somewhere. Finding your general location is simple enough, as the ads on just about any site can attest to.

The point wouldn't have to be to steal your identity. It could just be collecting info for marketing, data which firms will pay for if they believe it's accurate. They would have to find a way to sniff out your online purchases too, but I doubt that's too hard if you allow all cookies.

I know this seems paranoid, but the point in collecting data in this fashion would be that the cost is close to nil. Like the cost of spamming, more than one occurrence costs the same as the first one, so you can easily scale up once you get it working.

Your gender would probably be more interesting to them than your name in this case. They'd probably be looking at regions and age groups. To get your address wouldn't be much harder, though, if they really wanted it. How many of you have your home address in Google Maps saved in your favorites (or the address fills in at least, I hope)? Don't tell me you write that in everytime??


Yeah, it's probably nothing. I still never put my real info in one of those. I suppose that's also partially because I couldn't care less what numerology says about my name.


Somewhat related, here's an interesting article from The Economist about "neuroeconomics", which is what it sounds like. Not surprisingly, we don't make rational choices when we shop.


The title was an attempted play on Big Brother.