OnePeople

For now let’s assume that our masters heed your hearty
recommendation that they grab all the surveillance and
data-collection powers they can. What will that future be
like? As we all know, it is the children that are our future
– and sure enough, the government’s latest “Connexions”
campaign has been introducing young adults to the chumminess
of joined-up, data-hungry government right now. First,
there’s the Connexions Card. Run by famously competent and
discreet Capita, this smartcard lets teenagers gain points
for attendance and attainment, as well as store useful
health information. It also gives Capita a profile of the
young person (via the Card’s accompanying Website), which
they can resell to advertisers. Capita is paying schools one
quid for every child they sign up for the card. Meanwhile,
more confidential data is being captured by the card’s
sister project, the Connexions “Personal Advisors”. Answers
to questions about the young persons’ parents, trouble
they’re having at school or work – can be shared with social
services, youth offending teams, schools, LEAs, health
authorities, local authorities, the police and probation
offices. Kids as young as thirteen will be asked to give
consent to such data-sharing, by Advisors who will drop into
their schools once a week for a little chat. All information
collated will stay in the system until the child is twenty -
and then kept by the government for another three years, for
“auditing purposes”. After all, you should never throw away
stuff that might come in useful…

Looks like big companies are finally getting involved in the fight against spam and pop-ups. Today Microsoft said it wouldn’t let hotmail subscribers send more than 100 messages a day — at least not unless they paid for more storage. It’s half-hearted, but still a start. Even a small fee might be deterent enough since spam only works by being essentially free.

AOL and other providers are now getting into the act. Mainly their efforts are lame, like the totally ineffective pop-up blocker I have from Earthlink.

With spam now making up half of all email, it’s about time for corporate America to get involved.

REDMOND, Washington (AP) — To cut down on junk e-mail, Microsoft Corp. is capping the number of e-mails that users of its free Hotmail service can send each day.

By limiting to 100 the number of messages that could be sent in a 24-hour period, Microsoft’s MSN division hopes to stop people from using its service to send the unsolicited messages, known as spam.

“MSN is strongly committed to helping stop the widespread problem of spam and this change is one way we are preventing spammers from using Hotmail as a vehicle to send the unwanted e-mails,” said Lisa Gurry, MSN lead product manager.