Ah, the hazards of flirting around on the internet!
Using an elaborate fake online persona, Cuban exile and activist Luis Dominguez scored an invitation to Cuba from none other than Antonio Castro (son of Fidel).
Dominguez introduced himself as “Claudia Valencia”, a beautiful Colombian woman who “met” Castro at a baseball game in Colombia (apparently there really were a lot of foxy ladies at that stadium in Cartagena). A months-long correspondence ensued, including online chats that lasted as long as six hours, ABC News reports.
Although “Claudia” usually kept her chats with Castro focused on romantic topics, Dominguez told ABC that he was able to use “Claudia” to get insight on Fidel Castro’s health, information he then shared with officials in Miami.
“On Jan. 15, in Miami, the rumors were huge that his father was dying,” Dominguez said. “That night, he spent over an hour and a half talking to me. To me, that meant that his father was alive and that proved to be correct.”
Dominguez didn’t actually gather much valuable intel, but the propaganda value of the correspondence should be considerable, at least outside of Cuba. (Inside, internet access is limited.) Dominguez has posted much of it online (in Spanish).
It’s not exactly live-tweeting the revolution in Iran, but “Claudia Valencia” is a modest example of how global electronic communications can be used to rattle sclerotic regimes.
PayPal is following the personal information trail you’re leaving online to verify that you’re a real person, even before you sign up for a PayPal account.
It reminds me of something my friend Sharon said when she bought a house last year. She Googled her new neighbors, and when she found nothing about them online, she started to wonder if they were spies, or maybe in the Witness Protection Program.
We’re all freaked out when we type our own names into 123people or pipl and find our home addresses staring back at us. But it’s sort of gratifying to know that all that information out there is also authenticating us, and conversely, helping to detect potential fraud. Would Clark Rockefeller, otherwise known as Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, have been as successful conning people all these years if his ex-wife had Googled him in 1995?
Wired explores Google’s web ad revolution: it’s not just the breadth and depth of the user data that make this a $21 billion a year business, it’s also a sophisticated system of auctions that instantaneously determines winning bids in the millisecond it takes to return your results. No small undertaking:
Varian [Google's Chief Economist, Hal Varian] believes that a new era is dawning for what you might call the datarati—and it’s all about harnessing supply and demand. “What’s ubiquitous and cheap?” Varian asks. “Data.” And what is scarce? The analytic ability to utilize that data. As a result, he believes that the kind of technical person who once would have wound up working for a hedge fund on Wall Street will now work at a firm whose business hinges on making smart, daring choices—decisions based on surprising results gleaned from algorithmic spelunking and executed with the confidence that comes from really doing the math.
Since financial institutions relied on complex risk models designed by geniuses to create, sell, and purchase mortgage-backed securities, let’s just hope this particular band of geniuses stays out of trouble.
PS: It’s been so long since I personally have really looked – you know, looked - at a sponsored ad link on Google, I decided to search “coffee” and just see what showed up. The very top sponsored link? Bing! Microsoft’s new competitor search engine…Where else are you gonna go to steal search traffic, right?
Real Privacy. More Data.
"Real Privacy" means
