Some of you may remember a company called Third Voice, which put out now-defunct software that effectively let third parties annotate other people’s Web sites. They weren’t changing the original pages, but their product was disturbing to many.
“Some critics have likened this to graffiti,” I wrote at the time, back in 1999. “That’s not accurate, because the original doesn’t change. More thoughtful critics worry that Microsoft might decide that this kind of software is a natural part of the operating system, thereby inviting the entire world to mess up Internet content that content providers have spent years creating.”
I regret having been correct on this. Will Microsoft recognize how bad Smart Tags are for the Net? Not likely. Microsoft will do what it pleases.
I’m also still wondering whether the tags can be used, contrary to Microsoft’s statements, for purposes that have the effect of surveillance. That is, can programmers creating tags make them work in a way that the user doesn’t have to click on them or do anything overt? Could just the act of opening a page containing tags start up a communications with a third-party server, such as one at Microsoft? Microsoft says its code doesn’t allow this.
Even if that’s true, one e-mail correspondent says:
“Once they click it, the user is still downloading a file from an unknown server (it doesn’t have to be from the same one as the Web page it’s embedded on, AFAI). What sort of warning does the user receive, if any? Are XML smart tag lists treated by the IE security model as executable code?
If not, what precautions are taken to ensure that it isn’t (a na