SITE BYTE
                 _____________PRATIK KANJILAL

Hoax, Lies And Internet

Cat some point of time, every person online has received mails about a raging virus sweeping the globe. Typically, they threaten dire consequences if the recipient does not pass them on to 200 people and promise salvation if they do. These are hoaxes and they outnumber real viruses by a factor of 50 to one. In fact, real viruses and Trojan bombs cause a fraction of the damage that threats and apocryphal stories about imaginary viruses do to the Internet. Threats spread in geometric ratios and in a bad week, they eat up as much bandwidth on Internet backbones as all the high-quality video offerings put together.

All good Netizens, therefore, check out the pages of the Computer Incident Advisory Capability (CIAC), run by the US Department of Energy, before they transmit scares. CIAC operatives are the oldest hoaxbusters on the Net. Where we say, ‘‘God, another one!’’, they say, ‘‘Gates, not another one!’’ CIAC now runs, in the public interest, a set of pages at http://hoaxbusters.ciac.org/
HoaxBustersHome.html. Just the place to go to when you get scary mail.

Hoaxes are so widespread that they even inspire parodies. Here’s one about Good Times, the best-known mail virus hoax, which travelled faster than the hoax itself: ‘‘Besides trashing your computer, Good Times will change your refrigerator settings, demagnetise your credit cards, drink all your beer, leave its dirty socks out on the coffee table and shave off both your eyebrows while dating your girlfriend behind your back and billing everything to your Discover card. It will seduce your grandmother. Such is its power, it reaches out beyond the grave to sully everything you hold most dear. Listen to me. Good Times does not exist. It cannot do anything to you. But I can. I am sending this message to everyone in the world. If anyone sends me another email about this fake virus, I will turn hating them into a religion. I will do things to them that will make a horsehead in your bed look like Easter Sunday brunch.’’

Son Of Seuss
Just when we were getting used to the idea of Dr Seuss being relegated to the realm of stuffed toys and baby boomer T-shirts, Random House has given him his own space at http://www.randomhouse.com/seussville/. Fortunately, the site is not about nostalgia. It’s a place where kids can learn the three R’s of the contemporary world — reading, reasoning and ’rithmetic — and get up to scratch on science, with Dr Seuss’s characters for programme guides. Offerings include educational games which children can either play online or after printing it out. Difficult choice, from a parent’s point of view — murder on the Internet account or murder on the colour cartridge. But really, a site which actually tries to teach the principles of rationalism in these dark days has to be worth the investment.

Surveillance Alert
It is pretty nifty to go to a site hosted in America and be served an advertisement for a phone card to call India, but ever wonder how it’s done? Obviously, you are supposed to pass on the ad’s URL to your friends statewide. Obviously, therefore, the site’s software has checked out your system and figured out that you’re located in India. For that matter, ever wonder how some sites that you keep going back to recognise you by name and seem to know what you don’t have installed? ‘‘Welcome, Nabobody from Icksville, India,’’ they chirrup. ‘‘Would you like to download software X, which you seem to lack?’’ That’s close enough to the bone to be frightening, isn’t it?

Fact is, a lot of sites snoop into their users’ machines these days. To check out how much they can get to know, check out Henrik Gemal’s excellent service out of Germany at http://www.gemal.dk/browserspy/. You need to have javascript enabled for his snoop-tools to make any headway, but most browsers have this setting on by default. Before you get all het up about this invasion of privacy, you should know that these very tools allow Netcops to nail cyber criminals. No two browsers are identical. They have different sets of tools enabled, different cookie files and different settings. This pattern, coupled with the machine’s IP address at the time it is used to commit a crime, is almost as distinctive as a human fingerprint, and is used as clinching evidence. The invasion of privacy is not without its societal payoffs.

( The writer can be reached on pratik@crosswinds.net)

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