Kelley Lynch
English 101 (K003)
05/13/13
It’s Personal
Do you think that it is simple enough for a perfect stranger to gain access to your personal information? With the technology today, most people would agree that it is frightening to think that their information is easily obtainable. Catherine Price illustrates very well how difficult it is to keep personal information out of reach by managing an experiment. Price states that the experiment that David Holtzman conducted was challenging to accept because of the amount of information that is already out there (387). “We decided that I would spend a week trying to be as anonymous as possible while still living a normal life”, proclaims Price when discussing her experiment she is about to conduct (388). Price gets the idea to do her experiment for one week from a magazine that recommended trying an experiment like this the one she is about to perform (388).
Price’s experiment is based on privacy and the attempt to keep her information private. In her article, “The Anonymity Experiment”, author Catherine Price discusses how certain information is difficult to keep private and she displays the attempts of keeping that certain information private. Her article contains details of her experiment, which is to keep her information anonymous and by doing so she receives help from Chris Jay Hoofnagle (Price 388). Price’s experiment involves multiple changes to her normal life by only using cash, getting a prepaid cell phone, a fake email, and much more (389). Catherine Price indicates that the U.S. doesn’t guard personal information so she tests the life of being anonymous and hiding her information for one week (388).
Catherine Price begins her trial by receiving professional help from Chris Jay Hoofnagle. Hoofnagle is a lawyer and specialist with privacy (Price 388). Chris has attempted an experiment similar to Catherine Price’s for the enjoyment (388). He has been effective in hiding his...