Evolution is a data-mining tool that searches archived information including cached websites, DNS records, phone records and IP email addresses. This information has been on the net for a long time, however the goal of Evolution is to map this information together and visualize a person’s online activity. The web version is in beta and client not yet downloadable, but this project has some startling possibilities that have me concerned about privacy.
Searching someone’s name, you can see that they own a domain name. A whois search will give that person’s home address, which can then be used to search for their home phone number. Searching their email address, you may find out they use a certain alias on several websites, where you may uncover other accounts and websites they use to find out where they work, or who they’re dating. If they have a myspace or linkedin page, those have been cached as well – don’t forget their blog too! You don’t need Evolution to do these things, but it promises to make this all possible with one click.
Searching myself on Evolution, I was confused with the other Dave Lester’s in the world. (YES – there are many of us) For the record, I am not a musician from Portland, an environmentalist from Michigan, nor do I have a beard and ride motorcycles. How can I differentiate myself from the other Dave Lesters online so this doesn’t happen?
ClaimID is an easy place to start – it allows you to “claim” online content and associate it with your OpenID username. When your ClaimID page is saved by Google or a tool like Evolution, it’s clear what content is associated with you. Another approach is to monopolize every username (with your name) on the face of the Internet. My recent acquisition of davelester.ORG was an attempt to do this – plus I’m not selling anything so davelester.COM wasn’t really appropriate.
Do you use twitter? You may want to make that RSS feed “friends only” unless you want a running tally of your daily activities associated with your home address, phone number and where you work. This information is currently not protected. I’ve been very careful about my blogging – mindful of the fact that I may have people reading this in 20 years looking back (or not, that’s quite presumptuous). My concern is that these data-mining tools could be used to do instant background checks on anyone.
Projecting into the future, my own hunch is that the ability to archive all this data about individuals’ lives, and increasingly sophisticated and publicly available data-mining tools like Evolution that emerge will start to have a large impact in the not so distant future. There is so much drama concerning the personal lives of politicians – could you imagine reading George Bush’s blog from college or seeing the photos on his myspace page? A friend jokingly remarked that this just means that in 30 years our President will be a farmer from the mid-west who didn’t grow up with the Internet; perhaps he’s right.