Do You Really Want That?

Do You Really Want That? was Originally Posted on September 29, 2013 by lavarock

I’m reading a news item this morning about people being reluctant to buy clothing online for fear it won’t fit. Yes, I’m one of them, although I have bought some size-based items online before. My experience was not perfect. One item was a pair of hiking boots which I wanted to use on the farm and would get wet. They seemed well-built enough and I got the size right, however when I put them on and wore them, I realized something odd. They had laces where you would expect but also had a zipper to allow you to easily get into and out of them. The problem was that the zippers were on the inside/arc side of the boots (facing each other) and I guess the idea was they would be hidden from view when standing with your feet together. Well it turns out before too long, the pulls on the zippers broke off because my feet tended to touch each other and the pulls rubbed and broke off.

Over the years I have rarely taken something back, but in hard economic times I am more prone to do that. It is just a bit more hassle to do that with online purchases. I can admit that it is rare that I worry about non-clothing items online. I have purchased a few very expensive items online and then had to wait weeks to months to receive them. One was a professional coffee grinder and another was a propane fired (on-demand) water heater. I have been pretty lucky

With my own internet business, I have been pretty conscious that some people may not like my products. I offer a liberal return policy and no one has abused it.

Some online companies are trying to solve the high return rates of clothing by using better sizing estimates. Some have better descriptions of sizes, some list weight ranges with the sizes and some even have diagrams of different body types where you can say you look “pear-shaped” rather than “totem-pole” shaped. Certainly being able to create an accurate measurement of your size and shape, then being able to use that on multiple sites, would be a neat idea. A major problems also seems to be that some manufacturers use very liberal sizing ideas and ones companies “medium” is another companies “large”.

Another article came from a magazine involved some of the ideas being developed in technology. Let’s take for example a smart thermostat which would know that you are in the room and like 72 degrees. It brings the room to that temperature and keeps it there. That is fine until someone else enters who likes 68 degrees. The system could average the two and make the temperature 70 degrees or there could be a primary person who controls the temperature in a tie.

We are getting closer to computers controlling much of what we do. We have computers that can grind a tooth replacement in the back room of the dentist, rather than having us come back multiple times. The dentist takes a photo of the opposing tooth, flips the photo to make a mirror image and makes slight photoshop type adjustments for height, etc. Then a set of instructions is sent to the machine in the back. A piece of new tooth material is on a small post and either the tooth material or the little Dremmel-type drill turns but it shapes the tooth while you wait.

NASA plans to, or is now using a 3-D printer technology to create spare parts in space.

We have cameras which can analyze a spot in a set of photos being taken as a movie and adjust the frame so that spot remains in the same place on the screen, limited camera jitter.

These are neat ideas however we are also adding technology that may not be so great for our security and well-being.

One technology that changed the world in a small way was Caller-ID on telephone calls. No longer would people have to guess who was calling. It limited those “Do you have Prince Albert in a can?” type phone calls. Many old movie scripts relied upon not knowing who was on the end of the line. In a twist of technology, phone companies were encouraged to add a process whereby people could block their number. Then there had to be a process whereby people could block calls from those who blocked their caller-id. It was not long before people realized that with a bit of newer technology, they could fool the percipient by having their call appear to come from someone else. I use the example that I could have my call appear to come from the White House in DC. That technology has been out there for decades with FAX machines. Before caller-id you had to program a fax machine to have the “call-back” number so someone receiving a document could see who sent it.

The Unibomber had return addresses on his bombs whereby the address was a real address. One even used the address of the FBI building in Washington DC. So even if you receive a phone call, email or postal delivery, it may not come from who it says it does.

Many items now have computers in them. Cellphones, telephones, thermostats, televisions, cars, clocks, watches, your refrigerator and so on. I once walked past a video slot machine and saw on its screen, Microsoft’s blue screen of, death (as it is called).

There are computers which being used by car rental companies that can detect how low the fuel in the tank is because some people drive far after their final fill up before returning the vehicle.

Newer cameras and cellphones can take photos and add GPS information to the photo header. This was a concern for people who took a photo of their family in a location and others could see where they were. Yes, CSI fans love it when the show tracks down a criminal because he took a photo or used a cellphone at a particular place and time and unknowingly included his location in the photo.

Imagine if you could go online and do a search for all people who were near the Washington Monument at noon today? It is very possible to be able to gather that info. Many people are carrying cellphones with GPS in them. Others took photos of the monument which include their exact location and date and time. There are people and organizations who can do those types of searches both of online photos and cellphone records.

Here is a simple search for you to try. When someone bought a new digital camera they often tested it out with photos that weer not as flattering as ones taken later on. You can do a Google Image search for photos named DCP0001.JPG which would have been the first photo taken with my camera type.

A few years ago there was a push to change internet address (IP addresses) to allow for more digits. This is because of the explosion of uses of those numbers. While people use easy to remember names like TBLOG.COM, that really points to a number such as 109.17.54.33 which might contain one or more websites. The server looks at the inbound request and sees that the caller wants TBLOG and not FROG.COM which might also be on the same machine. Well, we were running out of new addresses. When the internet was young, some companies were given a very large block of IP address. MY company, HP, owned the 15 block. Thus if any IP address you saw started with 15, it was HP who you were calling. IBM also had a block and so on. Of those major blocks, there were only 256 possible big blocks. These companies were encouraged to release unused numbers and smaller blocks to the pool to be reassigned. Still we ran out. The upper limit was 4.3 billion addresses.

The new numbering scheme enlarged the address space so large that every person on the planet can have their own IP address because we took that 4.3 billion raised that value 7.9×1028 times as many as 4.3 billion. I am thinking every man, woman and child and every device they turn on and every insect on the planet can be uniquely identified by one of these numbers.

Because each items that interacts with another (across the internet or within your house) needs some way to identify itself to another device. When your cellphone connects to your local router via wifi, your cellphone gets one of these addresses. You also have an IP address from your cellphone data supplier. You phone can determine which signal is faster and sends you data through whichever IP it wants. Although not using IP addresses, that remote key fob you use to unlock your car door has a coded it transmits. It could just as easily be an IP address and some data. Your fob could be “keyed” to a number of devices. Let’s say that you had a key fob with a particular address in it. A Car rental company could send a command to a car to say that your fob could unlock the door of any Ford Taurus on the lot. You could arrive after hours, choose the car color you like and drive away, all because the company know that your key fob number was yours. Like a fingerprint, each IP address can identify a device. Knowing multiple device ID a person carries can also be used. If the person has key fob AAA and also carries a personal ID of BBB and does not have any weapon IDs in the range od (CCC, FFF-HHH) then let them in the door.

Oh you think that a weapon or other item doesn’t have a built-in ID? Try taking a disk drive out of Walmart without it going through the scanner. Try taking a shopping cart out the front door of some supermarkets without going through a checkout stand to deactivate the wheel lock.

Walmart is using smart tags to track inventory in trucks. Perhaps every product will have them. There are pros and cons to this. It is great to be able to track a shipment where ever it is in the world. It is great to be able to tell if someone went out of the store with a product that was not paid for.

There is also talk of companies allowing you to fill a shopping cart with items, push it to a checkout stand and have the stand scan your basket and tell you how much you owe. No taking anything out of the cart, because rather than use barcodes, the system uses the RFID tags imbedded in each product.

So lets say that an RFID reader was inexpensive, let’s say in the $78 range based upon a recent search I did. Let’s say that Walmart has an RFID tag in every product. Let’s say that were sitting outside Walmarts door with said RFID receiver and a little cellphone screen. As people pass you, your unit lights up with a list of their bag contents. You are looking for a prescription pain killer and there it is. You follow the person and take their bag. No more guessing who to rob

When I worked at HP in Atlanta, I carried in my wallet was a plastic card and imbedded in that was a little PC board with a loop of metal forming an antenna of sorts. This card would get me access to the computer room and each card would resonate at a slightly different frequency when scanned at the door. That way we could regulate every person who entered the room. The wrong card code would not open the door.

At the mall across the street there was an electronics store and every time we went in, our cards set off their security alarm. We found that if we took our wallets out and held them over our head as we entered and exited, the alarm would not go off. People in the store saw these computer geeks come in and hold their wallets over their heads and thought we were crazy (perhaps we left out tin foil hats at home?) but the manager understood.

So, as we add more devices and connections, it becomes more interesting. It is not just the NSA who can tap into peoples lives. ATMs take your photo, some mannequins in stores have cameras for eyes. Casinos use facial recognition to see if you are a cheater in disguise. Cities use cameras and computers to drive through a parking lot. If you have outstanding tickets, the computer beeps and they boot your car. New York City was using EZ-Pass toll payment units to see where people were in the city (far from the toll roads). If you are on a cable modem, it may be possible to see traffic meant for your neighbors. For 15 cents you can tap someones analog telephone line without even entering their house.

Imagine all of this data passing through the internet or being able to detect as people walk by.

Imagine if every electronic unit in your house could have an address and be accessed from outside your house. If you think that high school kids posting photos of someone they hate on the internet is bad, imagine getting into their computer camera and streaming live video. Imagine hacing into a horrible neighbors house and turning off the refrigerator so their food spoils. Think that could not happen? Some country (people say it was ours) shut down Iran’s nuclear program with an “internet” virus. Do you really think that refrigerator you bough for $250 has any kind of security built in compared to a nuclear reactor?

So what is the point of this blog entry? Just to give you a perspective on good and evil going on behind your back. Oh I am not against technology but I also know some of the pitfalls and as a well-known commercial used to say “An informed consumer is our best customer”.