Technology - Mreneo To

The claim came from Jian Hu, a software researcher in Microsoft research laboratory in Beijing, China. According to Hu, surfing habit in internet has strong correlation with people personal character.

Analytical instrument, said Hu, can be applied to connect the various characters to guess internet user identity. "A good riddle about your identity can be done only by seeing the browsing history," said Hu in the World Wide Web 2007 conference in Canada, like reported by New Scientist.

This time Microsoft team has developed new cookie system for browser which able to be applied analyse. Besides, the data also can be found from web page cache which saved on computer or a proxy server.

Now, Hu and team research result has just can guess harshly the age and gender of web user. But the team is sure that soon they can guess accurately personal data like job, qualification, and location.

The instrument, even still in research phase, already makes a controversy. Especially if looks from security side and data privacy

Ross Anderson, computer security researcher in University of Cambridge, sees if the idea is realized it will end at the court. "They may be can say will impinge some laws in some states if making a software which beat safety procedure to protect privacy, starts from export control law and anti-hacking," said Anderson.

23/5/2007