Soon, you will no longer be anonymous. At least, everything points in that direction. Technology has forever changed the potential for privacy, and signs are that the younger generation is already adapting to this.

The technology to take a picture of someone and now all information that is available about them is already out there (Polar Rose and TAT offer it). This has already changed the dating behavior of some of the most tech savvy users: take a picture of a girl, find out her name, her friends, and if they don't manage their online identity carefully, you can even find out where they live. Creepy for sure, but a technological reality nevertheless.

Just look at the demo:

She takes a photo of him. The system recognizes him via a search on the Internet and tells her who he is.

The aforementioned companies are not the only corps currently developing this. Face.com already have identified 52 million people on Facebook after scanning 9 billion user pictures. Comverse has put this application in practice:

This month, Face.com will open its doors to developers, offering it an API to tap into its data. More applications are sure to follow.

It would seem that the outdoor shopping fragment in Minority Report will soon be a reality.

Most browsers have a unique fingerprint

The browser of most consumers is leaking so much information that Web sites don't need an IP address or cookie to uniquely identify visitors. This is demonstrated in research conducted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The digital civil rights movement gathered the data configuration and version of OS, browser and browser Plugins of volunteers who visited the site panopticlick.eff.org. The data was compared with the configurations of one million other visitors.

It shows that 84% of configuration combinations make the user unique and identifiable, so that every browser is a digital "fingerprint" left behind. Browsers using Adobe Flash or Java Plugins make it possible to identify users and track their momement over the web 94% of the time.

The state of privacy on the net

For those users to whom privacy is important, there is really no way to protect their identity. Facebook is pointed to as the biggest culprit when it comes to shamelessly exploiting the private information of their users, but browsers should be closely examined for privacy issues.