I agree. That is why my starting point was about protecting revenue.

Besides the obvious "protecting revenue" reason, I think there is a very fundamental principle at work here. Apple is obsessed with usability. They spend a lot of time on proprietary designs to achieve this goal. The experience with media/computer/device/store they want to control so that it is all a single, logical, and usbale experience. Interop with things not under their control will introduce usability differences and eventually destroy the overall design - in their minds. Jef Raskin was one of their early champions of usability. He has a great book too. I think if you understand their design culture you can understand their single-mindedness on a closed system. Now. I support interop. But I do have respect for those who take design and usability seriously.

My home address is not randomly assigned to me every time I come home from work. Plus, there is quite a bit of information around mortgages, tax documents, etc that tie me to my home address. Sorry, but the link between IP address and a person is pretty weak. Under certain circumstances it may be possible to prove a link between IP and PII. But as a general rule it is not as strong as home address.

I agree. The only thing they are saying is that you will not be considered well if you ever want to go back there. They would get themselves into trouble if they shared performance with third parties. To be honest, something made you want to leave. Whatever that thing is will still be there in the future. So it sounds like returning would be out. Still, people move in and out of positions and in all likelyhood any future application you might have with them culd be considered. They woudl want to know more details about the statement. If you say what you said in your post I'd say you might be OK.

In a typical college recruiting scenario the potential employer would not go through the time and expense to pull a credit report or criminal history. At the point of recruitment they would not have permission to do so and would not want to, frankly. However, a quick scan of the internet is a pretty easy, low cost check. So might you not get a call to attend a recruiting event due to this type of screen? perhaps. If you get to the point where you have applied and have given permission to pull records, then the blog is moot. I guess the only thing you could do if you receive a rejection of some sort is to follow up. make sure they have averything they need. Maybe they just didn't have your phone #.

An antire group of people devoted to tracking and reporting on the whereabouts of the president. They could hire pundits to theorize on why he is there, film him getting in the car, getting out of the car. They could even predict where he's going to be, like "The president will be in Miami next Tuesday to talk to the guy in that place". Now that would be really freaky.

There is a difference between sharing your home address and sharing your credit card number. The post is suggesting that the merchant shared only the credit card number with Samsung. I'm saying that is highly unlikely. I agree with the poster below suggesting it was Best Buy that sent the disk or shared information on home address with Samsung.

It seems unlikely Best Buy or any other merchant would share your credit card information wiht Samsung as this would violate their agreement with the card associations (e.g. Visa, Mastercard). I also doubt a merchant woudl even chare your name with the merchant as they would want to prevent direct sales. They want you back in the store. There is most likely some other thing at work here.

It seems strange to me that ABC would use go.com to publish news. Why not their own site? The language seemed a little bit too crazy for me to be reputable. If I had to guess, someone just pasted the ABC logo on their paranoid rants.