BayFF Privacy Fair

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is sponsoring a privacy fair with companies selling privacy "solutions" of various sorts. Monday, December 4, in Berkeley, California, see below for more details. They've got free food so it can't be all bad...

Dec. 4 "BayFF" Mini Tech Fair Examines Online Privacy Products & Services

Come one, come all! Find out the latest ways to protect your privacy before you get holiday fever online!

WHO: Electronic Frontier Foundation, Berkeley Center for Law and Technology, Anonymizer, Disappearing Inc., Incogno, iPrivacy, Safeweb, Zendit, ZeroKnowledge, and ZipLip
WHAT: "BayFF" Mini Tech Fair Showcasing Privacy Enhancing Products
WHEN: Monday, December 4, 2000, at 7pm PT
WHERE: Berkeley Center for Law & Technology
University of California
School of Law
Boalt Hall, Room 140
Berkeley, California 94720-7200
Telephone: [phone]
Facsimile: [phone]
This event is free and open to the general public. Food and beverages will be served.

The upcoming BayFF focuses on eight companies who will be demonstrating their privacy enhancing products.

In a world of web bugs and online tracking devices, it can be hard to know who has access to your personal information. As online privacy becomes a more important issue to the public at large, the business world is attempting to provide solutions.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology are hosting a tech fair with eight privacy-focused companies which will demo products that can help you keep your private information in your own hands this holiday season. Learn how to send encrypted messages through your email account, surf the web privately, and even purchase things online anonymously! Each company will be set up to show you exactly how its product works and answer any questions you may have. You have choices inthe way you use the Internet. Come and learn about what they are.

Below are descriptions of each of the particpating vendors describing what they do. These descriptions are from materials supplied to us by the individual companies so EFF cannot warrant their completeness or accuracy.

Anonymizer.com has offered users the ability to surf the web in a private and anonymous fashion since 1996. Their mission is to ensure that an individual's right to privacy is not compromised by going online. (www.anonymizer.com)

Disappearing Inc. is the developer of Disappearing(tm) Email, which lets individuals write their messages with a digital version of disappearing ink and allows companies to implement mail policies. (www.disappearing.com)

The Incogno corporation provides an anonymous e-commerce solution offered to customers by Internet merchants. Using Incogno SafeZone, customers can buy and receive product shipments without revealing their names, addresses, e-mail addresses, or credit card information to the merchant. (www.incogno.com)

iPrivacy protects against the tracking of clickstream data and the collection of personal and financial information into databases. iPrivacy protects consumers by substituting one-time use, private information for their real identity, enabling consumers to surf, purchase and receive delivery of goods bought on the Internet in complete privacy. (www.iprivacy.com)

SafeWeb enables users to surf the Internet privately and securely from any major browser or platform, at anytime and for free, without downloads. SafeWeb encrypts all web content and protects users from invasive cookies, scripts and web bugs via a seamless and easy to use web interface. (www.safeweb.com)

Zendit is a Seattle-based company developing a suite of Web-based encryption and privacy tools that will empower online users with the ability to communicate, travel and purchase on the Internet with their privacy intact. The system will form the basis of a secure, privacy-enhanced, messaging and transaction platform.(www.zendit.com)

Zero-Knowledge Systems is laying the digital infrastructure for privacy-enabled communications and commerce. Zero-Knowledge provides consumers and corporations with products and services that enable privacy through advanced mathematics, cryptography and source code. (www.zeroknowledge.com)

ZipLip is a developer of secure applications for enterprises and consumers around the world. ZipLip systems deliver to all web-based devices including PCs, PDAs, and wireless handsets internationally. (www.ziplip.com)

For more information on online privacy, see:

EFF's Top 12 Ways to Protect Your Online Privacy:
http://www.eff.org/privacy/eff_privacy_top_12.html

EFF's Online Privacy Archive:
http://www.eff.org/privacy

The Privacy Rights Clearinghouse:
http://www.privacyrights.org

For directions to the event, you can use free services like http://www.mapquest.com or http://maps.yahoo.com to generate driving directions or maps. For BART, CalTrain and Muni directions, please call their information lines.

This month's BayFF will be Webcast by Eclipsnow! which has kindly donated its services to EFF. Eclipsnow! has been Webcasting corporate events,public affairs music and entertainment since 1996. Eclipsnow!'s Web site: http://www.eclipsnow.com

BayFF is first and foremost a real-space event, meant to serve as an educational forum for the local community, as well as a catalyst for like-minded activists. Locals, please show your support in person! BayFF fans and followers that are scattered across the country and around the world can check the EFF Website for a link to the Webcast. See the BayFF homepage at: http://www.eff.org/bayff

Continuing over 10 years of defending civil liberties online, EFF presents a series of regular meetings to address important issues where technology and policy collide. These meetings, entitled "BayFF" Bay-area Friends of Freedom), kicked off on July 10, 2000, and will continue on a monthly basis.

You can subscribe to receive future BayFF announcements. To subscribe,email [e-mail] and put this in the text (not the subject line): subscribe bayff.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is the leading civil liberties organization working to protect rights in the digital world. Founded in 1990, EFF actively encourages and challenges industry and government to support free expression, privacy, and openness in the information society. EFF is a member-supported organization and maintains one of the most-linked-to Web sites in the world: http://www.eff.org

The mission of the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology is to foster beneficial and ethical advancement of technology by promoting the understanding and guiding the development of intellectual property and related fields of law and policy as they intersect with business, science and technology. http://www.law.berkeley.edu/bclt/

The great thing about the Web is linking.

[Siqnal 11]

See, if michael would just link to the information instead of posting the whole thing, his stories would make it to the front page more often.

--

This is nice.

[Chacham]

Too bad I don't live in California.

I used the Anonymizer Dialup service for a while. I was impressed at how good it was. Quality, privacy, and speed, very nice.

Sure, we'll sell you something

[Sir.Cracked]

Sure, we'll sell you a privacy solution...

Just give us your Name, Address, CC#, Place of Birth, SSN, Mother's Maden name, what you want to be when you grow up, body measurements etc. to plug into our database.

IMHO, buisness and sales are the arch-nemisis of privacy. Sure there are honest companies, but it seems to make any sort of transaction these days requires a disclosure of your entire personal history. My question would be, Any of these vendors accept cash and no questions of me? If not, privacy goes out the window.