Big Brother Is Watching

I know I’m supposed to be writing the second part of the Arrowhead Beach story but once again, I got sidetracked.

A friend called me about his job interview. He thought he knew everything about the company…or as much as he could find out through research but the interview played out differently.

The company specializes in customized design of fraud logic systems. With the main goal being fraud detection, they figure out how a person spends his or her time in the workplace and outside. For instance, a company rep may be hired to evaluate if office personnal use their computers for company business or are they messaging between desks, or accessing outside internet sites unrelated to the business. In 2 to 6 hours they will identify what sites each computer has been on, access mailing lists, personal information, emails and all forms of communication per employee, SSN’s, and any other information they think might be relevant to who has hired them.

They used my friend as a prime example. Instantly they were able to identify what he has been researching, where he shops for groceries, and how he spends his money. They even asked him how he liked the fishing trip he took in 1997. Needless to say my friend was speechless and asked how they knew he went fishing. He was told that they have record of him buying a fishing pool through Amazon and booking a flight. Now I don’t know about you, but this is CREEPY! I realize that a lot of the stuff we use on internet is more publicly available than we think, but this feels like spying. Supposedly even if you delete, it’s in cyberspace and that information is available. Everything you write on Facebook, Twitter, blogs, basically every time you turn on your email and punch the keys, it is public record. All I know is I’m screwed!