@jra:
In principle, I agree with you. Matching of personal interests (formulated -for example- in queries to search engines) with -for example- insurance data would be an issue for interested parties.
But, it is not the type of business we are interested in. Some day, we might charge commercial users for online information management. Some other day we might add value-adding services like delivery of fulltext articles etc.). May be, will try to sell context-related books through Amazon Apis (This feature was already actice and it could be set agin in the near future). Basic Searching and Storing of search results and bookmarks (personal Web Collections) will remain forever a free feature for private persons.
We are not logging IPs and we are not creating hidden personal user profiles. Contrarily, MESHine lets users query Google and the other search engines privately. The only IP that is transmitted to search engine providers is the one of MESHine itself.
And: 1. It is not necessary at all to register to use MESHine only for searching 2. To be able to store and/or re-publish searches and/or results, it is necessary to register with valid email adress only. No additional personal data is required. 3. Thus, personal privacy is kept. Users can decide deliberately what (if any) personal information will be disclosed to what public or private users or user groups.
To this point in time (and I say: unfortunately) it seems to me that this (big-brother-thing) is not an issue at all, since MESHine is used by / known to only very few people....(yes, I know: too much colors, buggy/ugly styles and CSS, too slow, low quantity and quality of user-generated content much, too small audience, etcetcetc..)
Cheers,
Alex Hoelzel, http://www.meshine.info
Alexander Hölzel CEO EUTROPA AG
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