I don't encourage it because I think it's a nice thing to do. I just have zero faith in niceness, or the general public's perception of what is nice, to keep th

I don't encourage it because I think it's a nice thing to do. I just have zero faith in niceness, or the general public's perception of what is nice, to keep them secure. If all parties were transparent about their self-interest, the nature and scope of the problem would become much more clear to everyone. Instead, we spend all our energy going after the occasional red herring with a curly mustache. Facebook looking at your referer header? Evil! Google sniffing open wifi? Dastardly! Gmail scraping email for adsense keywords? Insidious! Anything that contributes to this theatre is just helping to keep the masses ignorant.