"Human Trails In Cyberspace

Social scientists create maps of online interactions

Multimedia: Maps and audio charting human interactions in cyberspace

By JEFFREY R. YOUNG

Philadelphia

If the Internet is a new kind of social space, what does it look like?

That's a question of particular interest to social scientists eager to see what cyberspace might reveal about the nature of human behavior.

Researchers, after all, have long sought to map social groupings and interactions in the physical world. Now, with so much activity on computer networks, scientists can collect vast amounts of hard data on human behavior. Each blog points to other blogs in ways that reveal patterns of influence. Online chats can be tallied and parsed. Even the act of clicking on links can leave trails of activity like footprints in the sand....

Risky Business: Stealth Surfing at Work

Not long after I told my buddy about Anonymizer, I heard from another friend, an IT director for a fairly large company. It may not be such a good idea to surf anonymously at the office:

"I recently had an employee, an MIS employee at that, fired. He was using Anonymizer at work. We have a tracking system (Web Inspector) and I kept noticing that he was leaving no tracks.

"I consulted with my supervisor and he decided that I should analyze the employee's system. I found footprints, hacking, and a batch file he used to delete all Internet traces. So I sent the system off to forensics and they found all the bits, each and every one. We're now in legal limbo. The employee is being fired, not for the hacking or the batch file, but for using the Anonymizer.

"Thought maybe you'd be interested in hearing about the dangers of using the Anonymizer in the workplace. They claim the Anonymizer hides your tracks at work--but I guess not all of them."

--Name Withheld, Network and Computer Systems Administrator

I asked George Siegel, my network guru, what he thought. Here's what he said: "It's interesting to note how the user was initially discovered -- by the absence of anything incriminating. Network professionals have logs showing just about everything that goes on and they look for any deviation from the norm. I can always tell who is up to no good... their computers are scrupulously clean."

Figures on Chinese Engineers Fail to Add Up
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5478159

by Adam Davidson 

Morning Edition, June 12, 2006 · A report cited in The New York Times and quoted on the House floor claimed China graduates nine times as many engineers as the U.S. Skeptical, a Duke professor had students check the numbers.

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