COOKIES | One small step for Carol Brady. One giant digital footprint for mankind.

Wise Words Media weighs up the personal vs professional behind The Digital Experience of our collective digital footprints.

One small step for Carol Brady. One giant digital footprint for mankind.

Carol Brady Fails to Realise That Cookies Are Tracking Her Every Move
Carol Brady Fails to Realise That Cookies Are Tracking Her Every Move

The New York Times reported on the phenomenon of the rolling, nation-wide online search query for Carol Brady’s maiden name. Becoming the earliest known example of a mass digital footprint, it was generated during the American episode of ‘Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?’

Simultaneously it finally provided Google with new evidence of a sustainable business model [1].

COOKIES | noun or verb?

Identifies computer, records preferences and other statistics about your use

Developed 1994 at Netscape, Cookies are “bits of code that allow information to be passed between a server and a client computer”. The privacy implications of such monitoring mechanisms come from monitoring and profiling of users [2].

COOKIES and wifi

If Carol Brady had taken on Cookies in the digital age, she’d never use password protected websites on wifi services such as at Melbourne’s Novotel Hotel. Well – we hope she wouldn’t. Would you?

Liable to hacking and phishing, such portals are provided by 3rd parties – this case, reivernet.com.

For both provider and user there are professional implications.

Within its terms of use, Novotel states no personal information will be sold or traded, while monitoring, storage and collection will occur. Novotel’s unsecured wifi service has ‘user-beware’ implications for the user.

‘Terms of Use’ state that all responsibility for using the wi-fi service fall onto the user.

From a professional standpoint, the onus is on you as the user to ensure that extra precautions are taken so that your commercial-in-confidence information and data are not at risk.

Had the opportunity presented, no doubt Alice may have also had home-spun opinions on Cookies in the digital age.

After all, Alice was the face of ‘Shake ‘n Bake’ classic tv commercials.

ABOUT | The Digital Experience

Wise Words Media and Callumny Films launch coverage and commentary on a range of new topics.

The Digital Experience explores topics around digital security, digital footprints and our take on copyright, intellectual property and privacy in what Shoshana Zuboff has proclaimed ‘The Age of Surveillance Capitalism’.

Other forthcoming subjects via Callumny Films at LinkedIn include Sherlock | A World Unlocked – Mapping The Sherlock Holmes Canon.

READ MORE

#DigitalFootprint

REFERENCES

[1] Zuboff, S., The Age of Surveillance Capitalism – The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power, London: Profile Books Ltd, 2019 p75

[2] Zuboff, S., ibid p86

Image courtesy of The Brady Bunch – Astrology Forecast

Leave a Reply