Probably you think of a blooper as a one-time mistake, the sort of often-humorous slip (often called an “out-take”) that an actor or public speaker might make. In recent years it has become stylish for some movies to tack on the best of these after the final scene. In high-tech hardware a blooper is usually a costly mistake, because the product malfunctions and has to be replaced. Ditto for software with critical missions—military, industrial control, etc.—or for gaps in security that offer hackers a chance to cause costly mischief (the late 2013 theft of Target’s credit card customer data comes to mind). Fortunately, for a lot of the content on the Internet, especially the Web, such mistakes are frequently more annoying than costly.

But there is a lot of stuff on the Web that isn’t what it seems to be, and intentionally so. Why? Because of the vested interests of the companies and individuals providing it. Hardly anyone believes that all advertising claims are true, but they aren’t on the lookout for intentional shady behavior motivated by billions of dollars of economic gains. People are now starting to realize that the big information companies like Facebook and Google are using harmless-appearing personal data (which they thought was being held in confidence) for purposes never imagined. People who clamor for “transparency” in government and elsewhere aren’t yet clamoring for it in such areas as search engine rankings. TechnologyBloopers will identify these “Intentional Bloopers” so the public can pressure the violators to fix them.