Date: Sat, 11 Mar 95 13:11:43 EST Errors-To: Comp-privacy Error Handler From: Computer Privacy Digest Moderator To: Comp-privacy@uwm.edu Subject: Computer Privacy Digest V6#026 Computer Privacy Digest Sat, 11 Mar 95 Volume 6 : Issue: 026 Today's Topics: Moderator: Leonard P. Levine Re: Use of Mailboxes Re: Use of Mailboxes Credit Files and Letters Re: Proving your Citizenship Re: The IRS and INS Re: SSN Question Re: SSN Question Re: SSN Question SSNumber Vs National Insurance Number Research Paper Re: More on Junk e-Mail Research Paper Hello From Merry Old Info on CPD [unchanged since 12/29/94] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: aja@gmr.com (Andrew J. Allen) Date: 08 Mar 1995 20:32:27 GMT Subject: Re: Use of Mailboxes Organization: Cadillac World Headquarters Finally, the post office must abide by all postal regulations (eg, they cannot accept personal checks, they cannot just trash first class mail Would someone please explain this to me. I purchase stamps at my local postoffice with a personal check quite regularly. -- *---------------------------------------------------------------* | aja@cad.vmss.gmeds.com | Opinions are my own and do not | | EDS/Cadillac World HQ | necessarily reflect those of my | | 30009 Van Dyke | employer or customer. | | P.O. Box 9025 |--------------------------------------* | Warren MI 48090-9025 | Advise given without warranty. | *---------------------------------------------------------------* | Any suficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from | | magic. A. C. Clarke | *---------------------------------------------------------------* ------------------------------ From: kinkale@quincy.edu (Lee Kinkade) Date: 09 Mar 1995 10:06:02 -0600 Subject: Re: Use of Mailboxes Organization: Quincy University I had considerable trouble with the local Post Office and our on campus Mail. We live in an apartment on campus, and all our mail is addressed to the street address of out apartment, no mention of our on campus box number, or the univesity's name appears on our mail. Even so, it would be delivered to the on campus box anyway. This meant that when no one was in the college offices we did not recieve our mail. As this is the only place I recieve mail, this was terrible, especially at semester break around Chritsmas. We asked that our mail be sent to our apartment, which did have a mail box, but the local Post Master told us that the College owned the property where our apartment was and could have the mail to it routed to any location they wished and that any landlord could have all the mail to any of their properties routed to a different address even if the mail was not addressed to them. Our situation was settled when the Dean of Students theatened the Post Master with having all on Campus Mail delivered to the individual street addresses. THe Post Master finally gave in and delivered our mail to our apartment's mail box. Is the Post Master Correct? I could not believe this, but that is the story we were given more than once. -- kinkale@shamino.quincy.edu | "vi,vi,vi editor of the beast."---A.E.M "If you don't want to know the answer, don't ask the question." ---D.L.K. ------------------------------ From: ggaldia@utdallas.edu (George) Date: 02 Mar 1995 09:33:14 -0600 Subject: Credit Files and Letters Organization: UTD I created form letters and spreadsheets for my own use to contact companies to remove my name from mailing lists and for credit companies to request and correct my credit file. I was wondering if you think anyone else would find this useful and what FTP site would be a good place to post it. Thanks. [moderator, the files were added to the CPD z-library subdirectory and can be reached via gopher, www or ftp, see material at the bottom of this mailing in the "Info on CPD" posting.] ------------------------------ From: khinedi@bu.edu (Kareem Hinedi) Date: 09 Mar 1995 05:39:04 GMT Subject: Re: Proving your Citizenship Organization: Boston University Dominic-Luc Webb (dominic@enk.ks.se) wrote: The problem here is the number of Americans, especially younger ones who, like me had a terrible time trying to prove legitimate citizenship, who must wait many years to get a job because of the requirement to prove citizenship. Usually, all you need is a birth certificate, or certificate of naturalization, or consular report of foreign birth of US citizen. With one of those documents, you can get a US passport. A US passport proves you are a citizen. (actually, the first documents do as well, but they don't have photos so they are not as easily used). Is the same thing going to happen with this. There are a lot of Americans who simply cannot prove citizenship. Please explain how you cannot prove you are a US citizen ? -- Kareem A. Hinedi Boston University School of Public Health E-Mail: khinedi@bu.edu ------------------------------ From: tdonahue@LightStream.COM (Tim Donahue) Date: 09 Mar 95 07:58:57 EST Subject: Re: The IRS and INS wrf@ecse.rpi.edu (Wm. Randolph U Franklin) said: Concerning what info the INS has, someone reported (here?) that when he arrived at Toronto airport from Europe and then drove to the US, at the border they knew that he'd just arrived at Toronto. In June of 1989 or 1990 I was returning to Boston from Montreal by car. The border crossing I used on this trip had a relatively small customs / immigration checkpoint. After taking my driver's license, the INS officer disappeared for a moment, reappeared, and asked if I'd been to Arizona recently. At first this seemed like one of the strangest questions I'd ever heard, given the circumstances and the questioner. "No", I replied. But a little voice in the back of my head said "wait a minute", and then I remembered that I'd spent four days in Phoenix just two weeks before. After correcting myself, the officer said "thank you" and off I went. I'm pretty certain I'm not a very interesting individual from a customs / INS perspective. I concluded that the INS must have received notification from the airline I flew for that trip and made it appear in some database within 10 days. Big brother is watching you. -- Tim ------------------------------ From: Peter Szmyt Date: 09 Mar 1995 16:28:32 GMT Subject: Re: SSN Question Organization: FONOROLA Incorporated gmcgath@condes.MV.COM (Gary McGath) wrote: Recently a magazine sent me a set of writer's guidelines, which contained the following remarkable (to me, anyway) claim: "Please understand that, by law, we can not send payment for an article until we have your personal information including your social security number." Does anyone know if this is true? This seems extremely unlikely. I'm a Canadian and have written for US magazines. They don't ask for my Social Insurance Number (SIN), and even if they did, what possible use would it be? This doesn't directly answer you question about the law though. __________________________________________________________________________ Peter Szmyt, User Interaction Designer, Simware & Chair, Ottawa ACM SIGCHI Email: szmyt@simware.com Phone: (613) 228-5100 x4029 Fax: (613) 727-9409 2 Gurdwara Road, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, K2E 1A2 ------------------------------ From: wmccarth@t4fsa-gw.den.mmc.com (Wil McCarthy) Date: 09 Mar 1995 17:42:44 GMT Subject: Re: SSN Question Organization: Martin Marietta Corporation gmcgath@condes.MV.COM (Gary McGath) writes: Recently a magazine sent me a set of writer's guidelines, which contained the following remarkable (to me, anyway) claim: "Please understand that, by law, we can not send payment for an article until we have your personal information including your social security number." This requirement stems from the fact that publishers have to withold taxes from payments to an author if they pay him more than $600 in a year, and as of 1994 I believe they have to file a 1099-MISC on you for "information purposes" if they pay you anything at all. IRS has no repect for your privacy. -- The ideal state provides its Wil McCarthy (wmccarth@t4fsa-gw) citizens with the tools to succeed Martin Marietta Corporation and the freedom to fail. I made this stuff up myself. (author of many books and stories) ------------------------------ From: dskidmo@halcyon.com (Don Skidmore) Date: 11 Mar 1995 00:46:29 GMT Subject: Re: SSN Question Organization: The Lone Net-Surfer :-) ! gmcgath@condes.MV.COM says... Recently a magazine sent me a set of writer's guidelines, which contained the following remarkable (to me, anyway) claim: "Please understand that, by law, we can not send payment for an article until we have your personal information including your social security number." Does anyone know if this is true? Is there actually a law prohibiting a party to a contract from making due payment (or should I say: entitling it to back out of its obligation) if the government fails to get its tax information? I am not an expert, but it most likely IS true. They need your taxpayer ID number (aka SSN) to report what they paid you to the IRS. This has to be a direct violation of the Constitutional clause that forbids impairment of contractual obligations; but I realize that the Constitution has long since ceased to be any kind of barrier to the government. The constitution gets interpreted pretty broadly when the tax laws are at issue. -- __ __ _ __ | Just my opinion? You bet! ___/ /__ / /__ (_)__/ /_ _ ___ | dskidmo@halcyon.com / _ (_- wrote: I was really amazed to see the news blurb about Worldata (http://www.worldata.com/), a Florida company, that claims to be able to send as many as a million and a half e-mail messages to its list of compiled e-mail addresses -- all for a mere 8 to 10 cents a message. They claim to be building a suppression file for those who want to opt out, and also guarantee that mailers won't be flamed. Gee, I wonder how they can guarantee that? Unless they provide an anonymizing service (gee, just think of the possibilities, anonymous e-mail for advertisers), most people will be able to figure out who the advert is for, and can flame the advertiser. But, maybe they're right, I might have to pick up the phone to call and complain to the advertiser--that isn't technically a flame, is it? Simple. They hire a couple of $6/hour droids to read the responses and screen out the flames. The advertisers will no more notice the flames than they do with telemarketing. Of course when worldata's mail partition fills up with copys of /unix .... -- Steve Smith Agincourt Computing sgs@access.digex.net (301) 681 7395 "Truth is stranger than fiction because fiction has to make sense." ------------------------------ From: "Karen Clark, SUNY ESC" Date: 09 Mar 1995 18:40:00 EDT Subject: Research Paper In regards to research paper questions on monitoring and privacy: I believe tha t some monitoring of most computer systems probably already occurs if for no other reason than to determine chargebacks for computer use, troubleshoot system problems, check the efficient use of system resources, preventative measures and determining future needs of the system. In doing all this one is bound to come across at least some misuse of the system, even if the inten- tion was not to check up on one's employees. The possibility exists. Then what do you do? Should monitoring of systems strictly for the purpose of checking up on employees occur? I personally think only if evidence of improper use has been found. But, I'm a fairly trusting individual. Do employees have a right to privacy in their use of business technology and systems? Some, but I don['t think people should fool themselves into believing that their email for example, is purely their own. Again, if abuse is evident, then the administrator certainly has the right and the obligation to his/her employee to investigate the use of the company's resourses. Can anyone agree with an analogy to using company money to earn interest for yourself to this situation. If personal rewards are gained then abuse is evident. Administrator s of technology are employees of the company and have obligations to assure the owners that their resources are used properly. If monitoring is the only method one has to accomplish this, then it must be agreeable. 2 more points: it should be well documented and openly discussed that monitoring is being done on the system and how much one can expect to be monitored; secondly, I believe that some time ago I read somewhere (sorry no reference) that during the Roseanne/Tom Arnold divorce email was sent I think between Tom and another individual where details of the divorce decree were revealed. When the news media got a hold of the info, I believe a court decided that it was public info and they had a right to publish. You'll have to check on this though - its just coming from memory. ------------------------------ From: cm5585@scitsc.wlv.ac.uk (J.Tench) Date: 10 Mar 1995 18:11:39 -0000 Subject: Hello From Merry Old Organization: University of Wolverhampton, U.K. This is my first browse through this group and I must say, I like it. Well mostly, personally being from the UK I'd like to see postings from other UK people, after all the internet is enjoying a lot of hype at the moment, and is growing here at an astonishing rate. Surely somebody has some invasions of privacy (computer related) to share, or knows of somebody doing something they aughtn't to be. Come on, share it with us and lets get a UK contribution to this group, up and running. Now for my main reason for posting, what exactly is this PGP sig stuff, I keep seeing on the bottom of e-mails. Is it something to do with Pretty Good Privacy, if so how do you establish the de-cryption key ?? ps. I will be reading this group in future...you are being watched ;-) -- ~)~. ~)~ _ _ |_ || || ||\ || || || \\ // (_/ / /') / (' / ) (_ | ) || || ||\\|| || || )X( Wolverhampton Polyversity ||__| || || \|| \\_// // \\ E_MAIL cm5585@scitsc.wlv.ac.uk UNIX++ [moderator: I choose the subject headers, not you, the blame/credit is all mine.] ------------------------------ From: "Prof. L. P. Levine" Date: 29 Dec 1994 10:50:22 -0600 (CST) Subject: Info on CPD [unchanged since 12/29/94] Organization: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee The Computer Privacy Digest is a forum for discussion on the effect of technology on privacy or vice versa. The digest is moderated and gatewayed into the USENET newsgroup comp.society.privacy (Moderated). Submissions should be sent to comp-privacy@uwm.edu and administrative requests to comp-privacy-request@uwm.edu. This digest is a forum with information contributed via Internet eMail. Those who understand the technology also understand the ease of forgery in this very free medium. Statements, therefore, should be taken with a grain of salt and it should be clear that the actual contributor might not be the person whose email address is posted at the top. Any user who openly wishes to post anonymously should inform the moderator at the beginning of the posting. He will comply. If you read this from the comp.society.privacy newsgroup and wish to contribute a message, you should simply post your contribution. As a moderated newsgroup, attempts to post to the group are normally turned into eMail to the submission address below. On the other hand, if you read the digest eMailed to you, you generally need only use the Reply feature of your mailer to contribute. If you do so, it is best to modify the "Subject:" line of your mailing. Contributions to CPD should be submitted, with appropriate, substantive SUBJECT: line, otherwise they may be ignored. They must be relevant, sound, in good taste, objective, cogent, coherent, concise, and nonrepetitious. Diversity is welcome, but not personal attacks. Do not include entire previous messages in responses to them. Include your name & legitimate Internet FROM: address, especially from .UUCP and .BITNET folks. Anonymized mail is not accepted. All contributions considered as personal comments; usual disclaimers apply. All reuses of CPD material should respect stated copyright notices, and should cite the sources explicitly; as a courtesy; publications using CPD material should obtain permission from the contributors. Contributions generally are acknowledged within 24 hours of submission. If selected, they are printed within two or three days. The moderator reserves the right to delete extraneous quoted material. He may change the SUBJECT: line of an article in order to make it easier for the reader to follow a discussion. He will not, however, alter or edit or append to the text except for purely technical reasons. A library of back issues is available on ftp.cs.uwm.edu [129.89.9.18]. Login as "ftp" with password identifying yourid@yoursite. The archives are in the directory "pub/comp-privacy". People with gopher capability can most easily access the library at gopher.cs.uwm.edu. Mosaic users will find it at gopher://gopher.cs.uwm.edu. Older archives are also held at ftp.pica.army.mil [129.139.160.133]. ---------------------------------+----------------------------------------- Leonard P. Levine | Moderator of: Computer Privacy Digest Professor of Computer Science | and comp.society.privacy University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee | Post: comp-privacy@uwm.edu Box 784, Milwaukee WI 53201 | Information: comp-privacy-request@uwm.edu | Gopher: gopher.cs.uwm.edu levine@cs.uwm.edu | Mosaic: gopher://gopher.cs.uwm.edu ---------------------------------+----------------------------------------- ------------------------------ End of Computer Privacy Digest V6 #026 ****************************** .