posted on Feb, 23 2010 @ 05:18 PM
I went to sleep last night thinking about ATS, and although I can't remember the dream I had very well, I know that in it, I was using my IT skills
to categorize the stars that people place on threads. I remember thinking before nodding off that you can't star something twice, so somewhere ATS
records the fact that you have starred a post. There are SO many ways to use the information of who starred which post, to draw a pretty clear
picture of each person who participates in ATS. It seems quite anonymous to just star a post, but there is no reason to assume that a person like me,
who can glean the gist of a post and give it a subject title such as 'Aliens have visited Earth' (the most innocuous of beliefs, really) and then
collect counts of stars given by any given person signifying agreement with posts about that subject. I'm not saying that ATS is doing this in some
threatening way. I'm just saying that no systems analyst would find it difficult to categorize posts and identify who placed which stars where. It
should give you something to think about, anyway! And before someone tells me that ATS has the best of intentions, let me throw out there that we can
not be sure that at some time in the future someone with more sinister intentions won't collect that information and use it against us!