This won’t be a very long post, I just wanted to show all of you that the federal government wants to be very clear in your expectations of privacy when using their websites. It also fits perfectly with the discussion of security and privacy we’ll be having tomorrow (or today, depending on when you see this). I was recently using the IRS.gov site when I was presented with this window:

It almost sounds scary, but to be fair it’s no secret this happens. It happens on most websites, actually, government or not. Their wording sounds Orwellian and apocalyptic, but it’s par for the course when conducting business online. I actually don’t have a problem with it, you can’t have 100% privacy and also have 100% security, you have to make sacrifices in one to have any amount of the other. Even so, the wording is so forceful it gave me pause. Maybe I should have used my real name instead of the pseudonym “Gleeson McNasty.”