- chemweb - imperial.ac.uk

Privacy
by Patrick van der Valk 03 Jun '96

03 Jun '96

Greetings, I guess the situation is worse than I expected. I visited the 'anonymizer' site, just to look around. One of the files told me that I was using Netscape, Windows 3.1 (although it is really 3.11), and that my address was caal_p3.telepac.pt. The later ofcourse does not resemble my email address, so I thought I was safe. Wrong! I got an email from 'anonymizer' to my real email address. Not only did I find this scary, but I want to know how is this possible? Has this always been possible, or is this a new thing? Anybody any ideas? Regards Patrick +----------------------------+ | BetaCyte | | | | Complete Internet Service | | for the Chemical Community | | 0-------------------------------0 +--------------| Visit our Virtual Office | | where the coffee is still hot | | | | http://www.betacyte.pair.com | 0-------------------------------0 ----- chemweb: A list for Chemical Applications of the Internet. Archived as: http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/chemweb/ To unsubscribe, send to listserver(a)ic.ac.uk the following message; unsubscribe chemweb List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (rzepa(a)ic.ac.uk)

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Society of Chemical Industry Web Site
by Paul Deards 03 Jun '96

03 Jun '96

I'd like to announce a new web site for the Society of Chemical Industry, at: http://sci.mond.org/ I know this isn't a "new site announcement" mailing list. The reason I'm mentioning our site is that I'm interested what other subscribers to ChemWeb think about society web sites. What should societies be putting on their web pages? What can the web provide that paper circulars and newsletters can't? I'd be interested to hear your views. (..that's it. Promise no new sites for a while!) Paul Deards Internet Publisher Chemistry and Industry 0171-2353681 x232 pauld(a)chemind.demon.co.uk http://ci.mond.org/ ----- chemweb: A list for Chemical Applications of the Internet. Archived as: http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/chemweb/ To unsubscribe, send to listserver(a)ic.ac.uk the following message; unsubscribe chemweb List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (rzepa(a)ic.ac.uk)

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Chemistry and Industry Web Site
by Paul Deards 03 Jun '96

03 Jun '96

Hi, Chemistry & Industry magazine has just launched its web site, at: http://ci.mond.org/ We would welcome any comments you have on our site. As well as selected articles from our current issue, and an archive of stories from the past year, we've added three databases: news, meetings and jobs. The most exciting feature of the site is our attempt to implement an 'electronic chemistry newspaper'. We're writing news daily, which can be viewed on the web pages. However, users can also register (free) to receive the news daily be email. In addition, they can select the news topics they want to hear about from a menu. I think (although I could be wrong) that this is the first such semi-personalised e-newspaper available, at least in science. What do other subscribers think about: (a) How best to implement magazines/newsletters on the web (b) The concept of "personalised" email news bulletins (c) ....our site? ---------------- Paul Deards Internet Publisher Chemistry and Industry 0171-2353681 x232 pauld(a)chemind.demon.co.uk http://ci.mond.org/ ----- chemweb: A list for Chemical Applications of the Internet. Archived as: http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/chemweb/ To unsubscribe, send to listserver(a)ic.ac.uk the following message; unsubscribe chemweb List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (rzepa(a)ic.ac.uk)

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MOTM
by Paul May 31 May '96

31 May '96

Hi, The June Molecule of the Month is now on-line. It's urea, and has been created by Stuart Fairall of De Montford University. Direct link is: http://www.dmu.ac.uk/~sfairall/chem/urea/urea.html or it can be accessed along with all the previous MOTMs at: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/Depts/Chemistry/MOTM/motm.htm -------- I only have 2 more MOTMs ready at the moment, and both of these have been written by me! So I desperately need more volunteers if we're going to keep the MOTM idea alive. Term has now ended, so maybe some of you will find yourself with a bit more spare time. If so, why not write a MOTM page? The pages don't have to be too fancy - just interesting. Typically, a couple of hours work is all that's required to make a good MOTM page. According to access stats, the MOTM home page gets a few hundred accesses a week, mainly from American colleges, so it's a good way to get your own Web site noticed. So if any of of you feel the urge to participate, please email me. Regards, ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr Paul May, School of Chemistry, University of Bristol, UK tel: +44 (0)117 9287667, fax: +44 (0)117 9251295 email: paul.may(a)bris.ac.uk WWW: http://www.bris.ac.uk/Depts/Chemistry/staff/pwm.htm "Another squashed hedgehog in the gutter of the information superhighway" ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----- chemweb: A list for Chemical Applications of the Internet. Archived as: http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/chemweb/ To unsubscribe, send to listserver(a)ic.ac.uk the following message; unsubscribe chemweb List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (rzepa(a)ic.ac.uk)

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Re: Privacy on the Web
by h.rzepa＠ic.ac.uk 29 May '96

29 May '96

>> COMMUNITY CONNEXION ANNOUNCES WORLDWIDE BETA-TEST OF >> THE ANONYMIZER [...] > >> The Anonymizer can be accessed at http://www.anonymizer.com/. Users >> need only click on "BEGIN SURFING ANONYMOUSLY" and then choose a site >> to visit anonymously. All their web transactions from that point on >> are anonymized. Sounds a bit like a caching service. However, the anonymising service itself can potentially record the users information. Hence, it becomes a matter of trust in the anonymiser itself. I would certainly like to know more of such a company before using the service in earnest. Henry Rzepa. +44 181 575 1839 Home/+44 171 594 5774 (Office) ----- chemweb: A list for Chemical Applications of the Internet. Archived as: http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/chemweb/ To unsubscribe, send to listserver(a)ic.ac.uk the following message; unsubscribe chemweb List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (rzepa(a)ic.ac.uk)

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Privacy--DejaNews
by Andrew Miller 29 May '96

29 May '96

Just picking up on Patrick van der Valk's reference to DejaNews - perhaps this is what he was alluding to - I've just noticed that this site seems to have added a relatively new feature (or perhaps I don't use it frequently enough), called 'author profile'. This is accessible once you've completed a keyword search and get some email addresses back, and provides a record of every newsgroup posting made (only going back for a limited period?) by a given individual, to any newsgroup, even those on completely unrelated topics. So if you want to find out someone's 'extracurricular' interests, beyond their workaday sci.chem postings, there's a pretty easy way to do it once you've located at least one of their posted messages. Of course, these are all public forums, as every newsgroup user should know. But is there something slightly unsettling about all your old messages being made available on a plate for everyone to see? As time goes on, will people be able to dredge up your more foolish off-hand remarks from decades past? And how long will it be before potential employers use a sift through DejaNews to help screen those final short-listed job candidates? (Hands up anyone who's used it that way already . . . ) ----------------------------------- Andrew Miller Editor, Chemistry & Industry SCI, 15 Belgrave Square, London SW1X 8PS editor(a)chemind.demon.co.uk ----- chemweb: A list for Chemical Applications of the Internet. Archived as: http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/chemweb/ To unsubscribe, send to listserver(a)ic.ac.uk the following message; unsubscribe chemweb List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (rzepa(a)ic.ac.uk)

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Privacy, a new twist.
by Patrick van der Valk 29 May '96

29 May '96

Greetings, If anybody was already afraid of 'spamming' and privacy on the Internet, now is the time to panic... Check out http://www.roverbot.com/ It is a new seach utility that scans Webpages to get email addresses. You can customize it to give you (for example) all chemistry related email addresses. It is fairly simple idea, but it will probably create some complex problems. Any comments on this 'gadget'? TTFN Patrick +----------------------------+ | BetaCyte | | | | Complete Internet Service | | for the Chemical Community | | | | 0------------------------------0 +--------------| http://www.betacyte.pair.com | | fax: +351-1-458.07.91 | 0------------------------------0 ----- chemweb: A list for Chemical Applications of the Internet. Archived as: http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/chemweb/ To unsubscribe, send to listserver(a)ic.ac.uk the following message; unsubscribe chemweb List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (rzepa(a)ic.ac.uk)

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Privacy on the Web
by Dr Alan Mills 29 May '96

29 May '96

Henry is right in raising the issue of privacy. It's a common topic which attracts great interest on the Net generally. There is one perspective which regards privacy as the other side of security (think of Zimmerman and PGP). Watch out for governments! ;) And of course security of transactions is of great concern to pharmaceutical companies (ie commercial privacy). I forward below *one* development "out there" that responds to the myriad concerns about privacy, that came to me via the HTML Writers Guild Business list to which I am subscribed. Some chemweb members may be interested. That list also discussed cookies, and their pros & cons quite extensively in recent months. The archives can be searched (eg for "cookies") from the page at http://sunsite.unc.edu/hwg-bin/query Views vary widely, sometimes with extreme positions being taken, regarding this little bit of technology. Rgds., Alan Mills at Venus Internet Ltd, 24 Denmark Street, London WC2H 8NJ, UK email:alan@venus.co.uk web:http://www.venus.co.uk Tel: +44 (0)171 240 5858 Fax: +44 (0)171 240 5859 Providing Web and Internet services and solutions ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sun, 26 May 1996 16:26:52 -0400 (EDT) From: Seth I. Rich <seth(a)hygnet.com> To: hwg-business(a)daft.com Subject: COMMUNITY CONNEXION ANNOUNCES WORLDWIDE BETA-TEST OF THE ANONYMIZER (fwd) I'm forwarding this message (from which I've snipped a bit out of the middle) because I strongly support privacy on the Internet. We need more anonymous tools, IMO. Anyway: > For Immediate Release - May 24, 1996 > Contact: Sameer Parekh 510-601-9777x3 > > COMMUNITY CONNEXION ANNOUNCES WORLDWIDE BETA-TEST OF > THE ANONYMIZER > > BERKELEY, CA - Community ConneXion, Inc., The Internet Privacy > Provider, announced today the worldwide Beta release of the > "Anonymizer" service for the World-Wide-Web. > > The Anonymizer allows people browsing the web to be completely > anonymous when making web transactions. It protects people from > having the sites they visit discover their email address, hostname, > type of computer, and other potentially sensitive information. [...] > The Anonymizer can be accessed at http://www.anonymizer.com/. Users > need only click on "BEGIN SURFING ANONYMOUSLY" and then choose a site > to visit anonymously. All their web transactions from that point on > are anonymized. As the service is only in Beta phase at this point, > users may experience slow connections or downtime. As the service > moves to Production release, these problems will be eliminated. > > Community ConneXion is the leading provider of privacy on the > Internet. They provide anonymous and pseudonymous internet access and > web pages in addition to powerful web service, virtual hosts, and web > design consultation. Information is available from their web pages at > http://www.c2.net/. -- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Seth I. Rich - seth(a)hygnet.com "Info-Puritan elitist crapola!!" Systems Administrator / Webmaster, HYGNet (pbeilard(a)direct.ca) Rabbits on walls, no problem. ----- chemweb: A list for Chemical Applications of the Internet. Archived as: http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/chemweb/ To unsubscribe, send to listserver(a)ic.ac.uk the following message; unsubscribe chemweb List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (rzepa(a)ic.ac.uk)

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Re: Privacy on the Web
by Tim Maffett 28 May '96

28 May '96

At 06:06 PM 5/28/96 +0100, Rzepa, Henry wrote: ..deleted... >c) The least well known mechanism for garnering information about >the user is the Persistent State Cookie. This is implemented at the >server side using some CGI program or script, and supported at the >Client side by e.g Netscape. Its a way of remembering some state >requested by the user and writing it in the user's local file base, >normally into a file called Cookie or "Magic Cookie". Next time >the user connects to a site, the server can retrieve the information in >this file (via the browser) > and act accordingly. At its simplest, a Web page can request >you identify your Browser. Next time you connect, it will know this, >and take you to the correct page immediately. At its darkest, a visit >to site (b) can interrogate the Cookie file created by site (a), and let >site (b) know who you have visited previously. Now this example is NOT possible, at least in Netscape generation 2.0x and 3.x Browsers. Cookies can only be interrogated by the URL that CREATED the cookie, or a 'lower' level URL. Take the following URLs for example: a) http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/chemweb/ b) http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/chemweb/lowerlevel c) http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/motm d) http://www.netscape.com/ URL b) is can access URL a)'s cookie, but other than that one case NONE of the different URLs can access cookies created by the other URLS. (for example a) CAN NOT read b)'s cookie) I believe that the current 3.x Betas have gone one step further and required EXACT URL matches for cookies. This has caused a lot of compatibility problems for sites which stored some general cookie at a 'higher' level, and accessed it from 'lower' level pages, such as b) accessing a)'s cookie above. I think that pre 2.0x Netscape versions have always required at LEAST the domain name to match to read a cookie (a,b and c above could access each other's cookies, but not cookies created by d.) > If of course the user deletes the cookie file between visits, this > mechanism is stopped, but HOW MANY DO? (PS there are programs that > can do this automatically. I run one for example on my Mac). > >There are security aspects to cookies; see >http://home.netscape.com../newsref/std/cookie_spec.html It appears that this page has NOT been updated with all of the current cookie restrictions. The restrictions specified here are very stringent though, and basically cover everything I described above. >However, this is largely written in programmingspeak, and >not easily comprehensible. It is not obvious to me what sort of >information could be stored in cookie headers, or garnered >by Javascript or whatever (ie SMILES strings?) > >Where I do worry is that Netscape does not seem to implement any >mechanism for switching the persistent cookie state off. I don't see a problem here myself, since only the CREATOR of a cookie can access it in the future. If a given URL created a cookie then I don't care if only THAT URL can access that cookie in the future, because, after all, THAT URL stored the information there in the first place. > >Anyway, I think that "privacy" on the Internet should be a bigger >issue. I know some people will say that by "browsing", you loose >all rights to privacy, but as I think I indicate above, there are various >levels of potential infringement I personally am more worried about a 'real world' example that DOES affect me, and that is magazines (and the like) selling their subscription lists to 'junk mailers' or whomever will by them. For some programming related items I will receive 10 copies of junk mail, with slight variations in my name, address, title, etc. This is common in the US, and extends to mail order catalogs selling your name (and what you buy ?), etc. I have found that most 'online' mail order companies have an option to specify that you do NOT want to allow your name to be sold to others, and this a certainly an option I look for. > >Dr Henry Rzepa, Dept. Chemistry, Imperial College, LONDON SW7 2AY; >rzepa(a)ic.ac.uk; Tel (44) 171 594 5774; Fax: (44) 171 594 5804. >URL: http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/ (Eudora Pro 3.0) > -tim Tim Maffett tim(a)mdli.com Principal Architect, Internet Technologies MDL Information Systems, Inc. ----- chemweb: A list for Chemical Applications of the Internet. Archived as: http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/chemweb/ To unsubscribe, send to listserver(a)ic.ac.uk the following message; unsubscribe chemweb List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (rzepa(a)ic.ac.uk)

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Re: Privacy on the Web
by Patrick van der Valk 28 May '96

28 May '96

Hi Henry, An interesting topic! and one that makes me want to put in my 2 escudos worth. >a) Every "HTTP" transaction leaves a trace on the server log, >and I think most people do realise this. What they may not realise >is that one can also leave information such as the OS, your machine type, >the browser you use etc. What the server webmaster does with this >information is the crunch. I suspect that many commercial web sites >do a great deal of analysis of such logs. We certainly looked at who >was browsing the ECTOC conference, but I think that commercial >publishers in particular value the client profiles they can obtain by >looking at server logs. True? (well, if it was, they presumably would >not confess in public!) Although I do not completely understand who you mean by the term 'commercial publishers', I must say that BetaCyte tries to find out as much of the 'surfer' as possible. However, the information supplied though by the log files is not _extremely_ useful. I would compare it to knowing what car someone drove to visit a store, or the way he/she dressed. Unless you are interested in this (like for example Netscape would be in the browser-agent stats), the information is relatively useless and should (IMHO) not be considered 'lack of privacy'. >b) Some Web sites are a little more pro-active in information >gathering. In return for some "free gift" such as software, one has to part >with >an e-mail address, postal address etc. Of course one does this >in the knowledge it might be used, and sometimes indeed a >package comes in the post a week or so later bearing information >of a greater or lesser usefulness. Perhaps this is a business model >of the Internet that we will also see more of in the future? What do >people think? This problem is ofcourse not only valid on the Internet. In 'real life' this happens all too often (I am still trying to figure out how Readers Digest got my mailing address after I moved to Portugal a month earlier). I guess people should be aware of this. What people might not know is that all the mailings on UseNet groups and even on (some) mailing lists can be used by 'third parties' so they can try to sell you 'get rich quick' merchandise. They use the achives (like for example at dejanews (http://www.dejanews.com)) to 'fish out' potential customers with a certain interest. >c) The least well known mechanism for garnering information about >the user is the Persistent State Cookie. This is implemented at the >server side using some CGI program or script, and supported at the >Client side by e.g Netscape. Its a way of remembering some state >requested by the user and writing it in the user's local file base, >normally into a file called Cookie or "Magic Cookie". Next time >the user connects to a site, the server can retrieve the information in >this file (via the browser) > and act accordingly. At its simplest, a Web page can request >you identify your Browser. Next time you connect, it will know this, >and take you to the correct page immediately. At its darkest, a visit >to site (b) can interrogate the Cookie file created by site (a), and let >site (b) know who you have visited previously. If of course the >user deletes the cookie file between visits, this mechanism is stopped, >but HOW MANY DO? (PS there are programs that can do this >automatically. I run one for example on my Mac). > That might be a larger, but still not really harmful, lack of privacy. I could see some harm being done if the user visits X-rated sites where changes to the cookie file are made. But still, I think it is nothing to worry about. I am more worried about unknown security holes in Java, but that is another story... Like I said, just my two escudos (2$00) worth. Patrick +----------------------------------+ | Patrick M. van der Valk, M.Sc. | | BetaCyte | | | | Complete Internet Service | | for the Chemical Community | | | | 0------------------------------------------0 +--------------| http://www.betacyte.pair.com (North Am.) | | http://www.betacyte.pt (Europe) | | fax: +351-1-458.07.91 | 0------------------------------------------0 ----- chemweb: A list for Chemical Applications of the Internet. Archived as: http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/chemweb/ To unsubscribe, send to listserver(a)ic.ac.uk the following message; unsubscribe chemweb List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (rzepa(a)ic.ac.uk)

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