The privacy conflicts that the young man encounte germany email list red in the offline world are nothing compared to those he will encounter later today in the online world. He sits down at his desk and loads up all of his normal browser bookmarks to quickly skim the days news. He checks his e-mail again. One of his friends sent him a link to an online video of a little kid singing a Beatles song. Having already seen it, he responds with a “lol” and switches tabs so he can skim the most popular articles on his favorite social news site.
He clicks several of the corresponding links and is taken to some websites with various clever images and lists. . He digests it like watching a flip book. Around the office he hears erratic bursts of laughter as his coworkers click the same links. Noticing this "popcorn effect" for the first time, he shares his thought on a micro blogging service. As soon as the young man opened his Internet browser, his operating system immediately began logging each website he visited.