Santa keeps a list of every child in the world, which he uses to track if they’ve been naughty or nice during the previous year. It’s unclear whether Santa uses data from credit bureaus and other third parties or if he relies exclusively on his own observations.

To date, Santa hasn’t disclosed the privacy safeguards for this data, a possible violation of several laws.

It’s also unknown how long Santa keeps this information. British law says that organizations must not keep data longer than necessary, which would require Santa to destroy the data he collects on December 25, although Pinsent Masons argues that Santa could keep this information for several years to protect against toy-related lawsuits. If the data Santa collects includes health (“I broke my leg this year”) or financial data (“our family can’t afford new toys”), he could be violating U.S. data laws as well.

Of course, Santa has been sneaking in and out of homes for centuries. Even if Mr. Claus is charged, I doubt we could ever apprehend him.

By the way, scientists have been investigating Santa too!

Enjoy the break.  See you in 2008!

I think we’ve both known for some time now that things are just not working out. In the beginning, everything was going great. I loved the way you would listen to my other feeds and let me make comments. And the icons were amaaazing! But I need more than just a quick icon here and there.

You spend most of your time talking about your big plans while all my friends are moving on with their lives. I just can’t do this any longer. I think it’s time we see other people.

We don’t have to call it quits completely. I’ll still keep your gadget on my iGoogle page. Maybe we can just be friends and take some time to figure things out. I hope you understand.

Yours Always,

Dale Basler

“UK pollsters YouGov have just completed a survey on the web’s most-hated words” [link]

Here they are:

• folksonomy
• Blogosphere
• Blog
• Netiquette
• Blook
• Webinar
• Vlog
• Social Networking
• Cookie
• Wiki

Oh, who cares- let’s see who can string’em all into one sentence.