Life In The Past Lane
February 9th, 2008 at 1:11 pm by BrianSurely make you lose your mind. Everywhere, all the time.
Does anyone else find it troubling that people at professional media outlets are tracking the IP addresses of people they disagree with in hopes that they can “out” them one day? Or worse, that some of them are collaborating with private sites to do it.
Nice try though, Detective Klanheider. Your amateur handwriting analysis-fu needs more wax-on, wax-off.
In the estimation of my bloggy Mr. Miyagi to your Ralph Macchio, the wax-off part I’m sure you’ve got down so stick with the wax-on tutorial. You miss 100% of the slander you never make.
They told me that when George W. Bush got in office that the voices of dissent would be hunted down and punished – and they were right!
To whoever is irritating the hell out of them, I applaud your efforts.
*clap, clap*
In related news, there’s gonna be a lotta slow singing and flower bringing when Ron Paul’s telephone stops ringing. Finally, Channel 2’s “paleo-con”/Paultard stooge can have the path cleared to vote for the true heir to Pat Buchanan…..that being one Barack Obama.
February 9th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
I have no idea who the hell that is, but I went to the site and saw a link to a “privacy policy”page. ( http://www.wkrn.com/node/2510) It says they don’t connect IP addresses to personally identifiable information. Pardon the long quote:
PRIVACY POLICY
Young Broadcasting of Nashville, LLC (“WKRN-TV”) is committed to protecting the privacy of our customer’s personal information. This statement applies with respect to the information that we collect from the WKRN-TV Web site, located at WKRN.com. Amendments to this statement will be posted at this URL and will be effective when posted. Your continued use of this site following the posting of any amendment, modification or change shall constitute your acceptance thereof.
I. INFORMATION COLLECTED
We collect non-personally identifiable information about you in a number of ways, including tracking your activities through your IP address, computer settings or most-recently visited URL. We may also ask you to provide certain non-personally identifiable information about yourself, such as your age, household income, buying preferences, etc. We do not collect any personally identifiable information about you unless you voluntarily submit such information to us, by, for example, filling out a survey or registration form. The types of information that may be requested include your name, address, e-mail address, and telephone number.
II. USE OF INFORMATION
In general, we will only use the information you provide to us for the purpose for which such information was provided. We may also use this information to deliver to you information about our WKRN-TV and promotional material from some of our partners, trend analysis, pattern detection, and site administration. Your information may also be used to contact you when necessary and may be shared with other companies that may want to contact you with offers consistent with your stated preferences. Users may opt-out of receiving future mailings from WKRN-TV and other entities by following the instructions set forth in the opt-out section below.
Non-personal demographic and profile data is used to tailor your experience at our site, showing you content we think you might be interested in. This information may also be shared with advertisers on an aggregate non-personal basis.
III. USE OF IP ADDRESSES
We use your IP Address to help diagnose problems with our server, and to administer our Web site.
_________________
Anyway, I don’t guess they really meant that.
February 9th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
Personally, I find this practice of sock puppetry to be reprehensible and in poor taste…
Besides if you are gonna try it, Brian, at least be good enough to not get caught. Sheesh…
February 9th, 2008 at 6:03 pm
I heartily concur with Mr. Greenwald.
February 9th, 2008 at 6:04 pm
Hear hear, the both of you!
February 9th, 2008 at 6:40 pm
Hey, I left a long ol’ comment that never showed up about that guy’s privacy policy and how he’s violating it by reading your IP information. It had a link in it so it might have hit your spam bucket.
February 9th, 2008 at 6:42 pm
That’s the thing though. When it’s not me and you never try to refute the argument that someone is making so you go straight to attacking the person.
Or, as in this case, who they wish the person was.
******
That’s an interesting route to take, See-Dub. I gave up on both VV and their, for all intents and purposes, dead sister-site Nashville Was Talking of having any editorial oversight whatsoever.
Unless your gem of a comment is lost to the spam filters, shoot in on over to me and I’ll post an update.Fished it out of akismet. They are both essentially ABC sponsored personal playgrounds for their moderators as a way to get around campaign finance laws.February 9th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
Well, that’s pretty much the heart of it. Read their privacy policy (there’s a link from the page you linked) and see what it says about personally identifable information, what they use IP addresses for, etc. Maybe kinda thin, I dunno, see for yourself.
I don’t have that kind of disclaimer on my site because I sometimes find interesting things in the sitemeter that I like to post–like the Center for Constitutional Rights dropping by when I was bitching about them. But if they say they won’t use your IP address to identify you, then they shouldn’t use your IP address to identify you.
February 9th, 2008 at 7:40 pm
I was taking a looser interpretation of what would be considered personally identifiable. Still, it violates the spirit if not the letter of a privacy policy.
I had seen it done before by one of them when they sought to post the IP information of an area attorney (of all people) because they didn’t like his commenting. It was eventually retracted but you get the point – they’re watching you. Not for making personal threats, posting pornographic materials, etc., etc. but simply for disagreeing with them and saying so.
Now let’s all go complain about the PATRIOT act.
/Because it’s about our PRIVACY!