It was the autumn of 1999 and I was utterly stumped. A young woman, whom I didn’t know from Adam, came over to me at my debs and chatted as though we knew each other well.
She was sharing the kind of details, all PG I should stress, that meant I simply had to know her. It was casual and normal, in no way forced or trying to lead me to any conclusion other than that I had to know her.
A few minutes later the perpetrator of this brilliantly executed trick revealed himself, a long-time classmate who fed her just enough information to baffle me.
This comes to mind because this past weekend a webpage went viral. Just by clicking on it I enabled it immediately to work out where I was (Badalona, Spain, at the time), the mobile internet network I was on and my IP address.
That was just the starter course. It also accurately inferred what my typical hours online were, the operating system, browser and processors I was using and even the battery status of my phone.
