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Little_fingers_Creeping_In

Feature Article December 4

Feature Article December 4, 2003

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Little fingers creeping in

One of the many joys of holding a baby is experiencing his or her hands exploring every orifice on your face. Between gurgles, smiles, burps and up-throws, little fingers seek to poke eyes out, dislodge dentures, stretch ear lobes and remove lips. I suppose ardent Freudians can speculate about babies wanting to return to the womb from which they came, but I like to think all they want is knowledge and intimacy. The little exploring fingers are adding knowledge to an already active brain seeking to understand the world about it. This is a pleasant experience and we are not overly concerned about the reasons; it is sufficient to enjoy the familiarity and to share our knowledge.

Not so with other little fingers creeping in.

Those of us addicted to the computer and Internet browsing are usually not fully aware of the intimacy of little electronic fingers creeping into our secret souls. Not quite our souls yet, technology has not perfected the process of getting past the computer keyboard into our very being, but it has successfully been able to access many of our secrets we have placed in our own and other computers' electronic innards. As in enticing children to temptation, 'cookies' are used.

Electronic cookie files are placed on a computer hard drive by an outside computer and every time you return to that URL the cookie sends it the information that you are visiting and then it can quickly find all the information in itself previously provided by you. This is not delving into the files in your personal computer, but all the information you have provided to other computers may be interchanged without your permission or knowledge.

With hacker ingenuity I am certain that the time will soon come that our private computer files can be read as readily as they are presently destroyed by invasive 'worms' and 'viruses' created by mischievous and knowledgeable computer users who use little fingers to worm their way through assorted computer chips.

I understand governments already have little fingers that have the ability to reach out, monitor and read private email messages as they presently do with court-permitted phone tapping. In the name of security nothing is sacred. In the name of experimentation and play, others are causing havoc in cyberspace and seem able to keep one jump ahead of those trying to protect our privacy.

Conscientious mothers probe their little fingers into the system to see where their children have visited while wandering through cyberspace. This motherly concern is acceptable to most as they want to learn what their children have discovered in the big bad world beyond the front door.

What can we do about it? Probably nothing, except taking care of what information we provide, but that is difficult for those of us wanting to use this latest means of communication to make life a little more convenient. My computer provides shopping convenience for almost anything without me leaving my desk. I no longer have to drive several hours to browse in a large bookstore; I can find more books, CDs or DVDs in a few minutes from the monitor than in the largest of stores. This is a convenience difficult to give up.

We have to tolerate the creeping little fingers until our dentures are dashed to the floor or privacy breached and then it will all come to an abrupt end. In the meantime, let's enjoy the little baby fingers trying to find out more about this complicated world to which they have been introduced; for that pleasure we can endure the nuisance of the other creepers.

With the participation of the Government of Canada