"Not to let harm come to any human." (Isaac Asimov)

A bot is a little program that searches the web for a specified content. This is quite helpful in most cases; for example it would allow you to search for a page while browsing somewhere else.

Some servers are not protected properly and thus a bot can not only browse the meta-tags of your homepage but also the content of your mail. Or, if you have a server on your machine at home and don't protect it, your filesystem. This is quite unlikely, as far as I know operators (true BOFHs don't get busted ;) ), but why take chances?

As with any technique it can be abused: a certain cult (a cult of Money) is known to use such bots to find critics; a government could use them to search for special words in your mail. Rumour has it that it is done allready (Echelon). If you know something to dismiss the rumour (or to validate it), I'd appreciate your mail very much.

Lately some information was posted at EPIC , containing hints on Echelon. If the documents posted aren't forged, it shows that some high-ranking people from the US have been monitored. Well, one would expect that. There is no proof yet, that non-officials are tracked.

(This is the drift, I'm still working on this page)