COOKIE MONSTER Despite an October 2000 Presidential Executive Order, the U.S. Postal Service continues to collect cookies from users of its usps.gov web site. Cookies should not be used unless there is clear and conspicuous notice, a compelling need to gather the data on the site; appropriate and publicly disclosed privacy safeguards for handling of information derived from cookies; and personal approval by the head of the agency," wrote Sally Katzen, the Deputy Director of the Executive Office of the President in a October 19 letter. The U.S. Postal Service webmaster has so far elected not to respond to our questions concerning the collection of privacy information from USPS internet customers. XP INSIDE Microsoft requires all users of XP to activate the software on-line or over the telephone. During XP activation, Microsoft downloads your hard drive volume serial number, the network card address and the ID string on your CD-ROM. Researchers concluded the data does not pose a privacy threat since the hardware ID numbers are not usually tagged back to a specific person. Although individual users may not have a problem with sending this data to MS, Federal Government and corporate users are upset because the data can be used for intelligence and marketing purposes. **************************************************************** Pcyphered SIGNATURE: 583E8C03D40D6477C9940D0444399645D7B733D8E4AF87033AA4C564E61C2148 E40A0A4FB200ACFF05DF9D08FAE933651506687E4090DE052F5FE7FE124E4234 99B7880E19D2CD7A
