Slashdot Mirror
Amazon Search Bar Will Track Your Browsing
Limit writes "There has been a lot of discussion regarding GMail and Google's privacy policies. However, with the recent debut of Amazon's A9.com, I havn't seen any mention to the information they intend to collect. I saw this article today, "The history server stores -- on our servers -- your history of interaction with us for the purpose of bringing that back to you in a very convenient way ... If you install the toolbar, then all your Web browsing, as well as all your searching, is stored as well." Where is all the media hype about this privacy issue?"
No-one thought there would be much difference in having another piece of spyware on your machine. I mean 29? 30? So what. http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/04/16/172923 8&mode=nested&tid=109&tid=126&tid=172&tid=185&tid= 187&tid=190&tid=201
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
Google is just a company started by a few geeks that made it big because they give an excellent service and that's it. Amazon is infested by the long tentacles of certain corporations and that's what matters to their business.
Guess which one is going to be slammed by the "traditional media" time and again.
---- Take the Space Quiz!
Seems to me that installing any third party browser add-on is only asking for trouble.
Why add another executable that will sap some your system resources while at the same time be able to monitor your surfing habits?
Doesn't make a whole hell of a lot of sense to me...
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
Personally, if an application can use my search records to provide me with more information I'm actually interested in, I'd welcome the oppurtunity. If anyone is concerned with privacy, they don't need to install it! I'm still waiting for the time to come when I don't have to watch tampon commercials on my television!
People are going crazy over this stuff, but they forget the fact that these services are not required. If you're paranoid and concerned that Google and Amazon are going to sell you down the river, don't use it! It's that simple.
Where's the outrage against Microsoft for allowing all of this seething spyware to install itself so easily? Likewise, where's the bad press about companies that are hawking this garbage and actively selling your information without permission? I can't tell you how many machines I've had to clean out this sludge from. Thank G-d for Mozilla!
www.lonseidman.com
People really need to get over these privacy concerns and actually look at real issues (DMCA, MPAA / RIAA). The media latches onto these issues because google and amazon are big names; the reality of logging is that every server does it!
Slashdot is logging us right now - via apache. We're logged / monitored throughout life, and there is ultimatly little we can do about it. Better to move onto more important issues.
I installed a9 when it debuted last week. For me, the privacy-utility trade off has fallen on the useful side. A9 doesnt do anything that you couldnt do if you
a. searched google
b. searched Amazon's Inside the Book
c. kept a running blog to document your thoughts on all the pages you visit
used your history bar in your browser
Bringing all this functionality together in one app adds value to me.
This has worked for me in the trial phase... will have to rethink the long-term privacy implications in a couple weeks.
TripInvite.com: Group Travel Made Simple Evit
...to disrespect the user's privacy like that, it's really not an issue if you're using any decent browser. If you bring this up with your Windows-using friends, it might get them to at least start using Firefox.
"Screw slashdot." -- Linus Torvalds
This "invasion of privacy" is not really an involuntary invasion. You have to know the risks of installing such software on your machine. If you voluntarily let someone into your home, are they invading your privacy by keeping track (in any fashion) of what you happen to be doing? I say no, because by allowing them in and not having unbreakable rules then you are allowing them to at very least keep track of what they see. This all goes back to advertising and squeezing every last penny out of it. The media makes pretty much all of their money with advertising, so of course they will not investigate their own questionable procedures lest they incriminate themselves in their own publications. Just because the spyware is coming from Amazon doesn't mean that it's newsworthy. I hate it just as much as everyone else here does, but you have to understand that if they think they can make money off of it, they'll do it. Companies like Amazon couldn't care less about having every customer being happy. As long as the money keeps pouring in they'll think they're doing everything right.
I am feeling fat and sassy
Corporation are not evil per se. They exist to make money for their shareholders. They believe monitoring web browsing habits of people (who are voluntarily doing so) can better help them service their customers (only the means, not the ends) and make more money. They are doing the right thing from their perspective. They are not a totalitarian regime forcing this on everyone. Same with credit cards. If you don't want people to know what you are purchasing, use cash.
The only bad thing about all of this tyranny of convenience is that in the future, there will be no choices, because the convenient choices come to dominate. Imagine if in the future, we can no longer pay by cash because everyone has bought into convenient cashlessness. That, is the true danger.
Simple: Amazon isn't exactly a competitor of Microsoft's like Google is. Clearly M$ had bought out the world's media outlooks to give Google an unfair shake. Hey, we all know this could be true ;)
It's not like if it was cleverly cloaked. They're pretty open about it - you're trading in some privacy for some convenience. I mean, not everyone browses porn of embarassing kinds they wouldn't like other people to see.
If it's useful enough, I could see myself thinking of installing it at the Win32 box I use at work. I mostly just look at slashdot and my webmail (hosted at my home Linux computer) anyway.
I mean, gee, there's always a trade-off between convenience and privacy. Not everyone's encrypting all their outbound email with a note on how to install PGP.
The later incarnations of Mozilla (Firefox) have done some nice things with their search function, both for the history and browsing in general. Why would anyone want to entertain the notion of using beacon software like the Amazon toolbar? Of course, I don't buy anything from Amazon, so maybe that's another reason this isn't a big issue for me. So far, my favorite online book vendor is nerdbooks.com- nice people, great service, and NO SPYING.
Yes, there are some nasty privacy issues, so one needs to pick the partner carefully (as if your ISP doesn't know your browsing history). What is interesting is that services like A9 and GMail create a new level of personalization in which the massive technological scope of an Amazon or Google is put to work for individuals.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Slashdot, while significant among the technorati, is a small eddy in a big pool. GMail is getting main stream hype - a senator in California is threatening legislation to prevent Google from rolling out the service. A few comments on Slashdot are not in the same league.
/. just a couple of stories ago. The concern with A9 seems, at least at this juncture, to be quite legitimate.
The concern with GMail seems to be overblown as was indicated here on
"The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.
I find it to be extremely disturbing that people (especially slashdotters, apparently) are willing to give tracking information with such little reservation. It's gotten to the point where people say "well, i'd like amazon to know what i search, so they can give me better content."
Perhaps I'm just one in the paranoid crowd, but it seems to me that it's a bad idea to have everything "personalized". I don't want to have advertisements directed at my predicted statistical response to them. I find it particularly intrusive to try and predict what I'm most likely to buy, then flood me with advertisements crafted for my demographic. I'd like to keep the companies *outside* of my head.
And of course, everyone says "well, it's just a service, you don't have to use it", but if these kind of things are seen as acceptable, at some point it will become so universal that even if you don't want to be tracked and 'targetted', you won't have a choice. What happens if in a few years, to make any purchase online, I have to agree to having every site I vist tracked? Is it *really* that unrealistic? Would most people really object? I think the answer is beginning to change.
As the old adage goes, everyone can find out what you're doing online, they just don't have any meaningful (or easy) way of linking that information to your identity.
What's happening here is that now Amazon can do just that. They already have all the details they'll ever need about you, such as name, address and credit card number(s), they just added a way to correlate all your book searches to that identity, and now apparently all your browsing history too. Is this really that valuable to the common person? Do WE need to know every book we've ever browsed or every page we've ever visited? Marketing types will no doubt love this, but seriously, how will all this information ever work for you more than to whoever is hosting it?
slashdot is hardly storing "all your web browsing" - just your activity on their site, which is how every database-driven website works.
if you want amazon to store all your web browsing and search history then that's fine, but there's certainly a difference.
personally, i don't want them targeting products to me based on my browsing/searching habits because i just don't agree with that sort of marketing technique.
Why bother using A9 -- a brand new, vendor-specific solution implementing privacy policies that are in the vendor's interests, and not the end user's? Google has proven that it's more willing to preserve end users' privacy, and to clearly state in what manner their information will be served.
Personally, I'd trust Google over Amazon any day. Google was founded by two geeks, serves a huge community of geeks, runs geek technology (Linux) as their core infrastructure, and stands to profit not by selling a service that respects the wishes not only of advertisers, but the user base it serves. Amazon was built by a marketing guru who stands to profit mainly by pushing product, and has already proven (different prices for same product, anyway) that it does not cater to users as much as those who wish to hawk their wares.
It's not privacy people are yelling about; it's the PERCEPTION of privacy. Lots of folks have known all along that these little spies have been getting installed on people's computers. Some of them have actually done something about it; they install and run software like Spybot Search and Destroy. A few will even switch to an alternate browser like Mozilla to help keep spyware off their machines. But largely they don't care unless it jumps up and bites them on the backside. GMail was planning to do just that, by targeting ads based on message content. Never mind the information would never be audited by a human, it's just the reminder that it's not private that's rankling.
"Symbolism over substance", as Rush Limbaugh pointed out; to most people, it doesn't matter if they have privacy so long as they can pretend they have it. Just like they can vote for people who lie their asses off (and I'm not even going to draw a distinction between either Republicrat party), just so long as they can PRETEND they're electing people who have their best interests at heart.
Amazon does this all the time, they advertise other products that they think you might be interested in. Therefore, I see no controversy in google automagically displaying ads to you based on the contents of your email. They aren't invading your privacy at all. Amazon, now this is a new and different problem. You have a tool, that you think will help you search the web better, and instead that's it's secondary feature. Amazon is making money on collecting your private information, and openly saving it for future use. Seems extremely shady to me.
I write code.
The irony with the "privacy concerns" over GMail or A9 is that neither is doing nothing new.
"They're reading my email!" So? The SMTP server that delivered your email read it. The Pop3/IMAP servers that display your email read it. Any spam filters or virus scanners on your email server read it. And many of these have logged the source, logged the subject, and in the case of Bayesian filters, logged keywords present in the email. Many, many computers have read your email -- but we're to be outraged that google is "diabolically" adding one more to the list?
"They're tracking my browsing!" Amazon ALREADY tracks your browsing. They follow you through every web page that has an Amazon graphic and they look up referrers to see what you like. The toolbar just makes it easier.
Honestly, guys, it's silly to get upset and threaten legislation over privacy issues with an OPTIONAL privately run service. If I want to call up Macy's and tell them everything I did today so they can suggest products I want to buy, that should be my choice. If Google and Amazon are honest about collecting this info, and people still use the service, than where's the problem? Personally, I'm less wierded out by machines offering me things automatically than I am by PEOPLE offering me things through intuition. At least no computer will ever read my spam and wonder, "What kind of a guy gets all this barnyard porn?"
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Tracking can be a good thing. I like the fact that Amazon "Tracks" me when I buy stuff, because they can make it easier to find stuff when I want it. I like the fact that they remember my name address and credit card because I don't have to type it in every time. I do most of my online shopping with Amazon, not because they are a wonderful company, but because they make it fast and easy. And they do that by "tracking" me.
Likewise, I prefer the "targeted" Google ads to the pre-tracking "catch the flying monkey" banners. The google ads are actually useful -- because they show me stuff I'm actually interested in. They can do that because they track me. Targeted advertising makes the internet interesting. I'll point out that Slashdot ads are the same way. Slashdot shows ads about web hosting and server sales, and so forth, because they "target" slashdot readers. I'd be willing to bet those ads are more useful to you than "Win a trip for two to Hawaii", it which case targeted advertising actually helped you
If A9.com can show me search results that are more likely to be useful, that's a good thing. If they have to track my browsing to do that, that's fine. Yeah, they'll make money off of me. But if they didn't, they wouldn't be there at all. It's not an invasion of my privacy to collect information about me. If they use it to track me down and beat me, that's an invasion of my privacy. If they use it to make their web sites easier to use (as, in my experience, Amazon has -- see first paragraph of this post) I not only don't mind, I want them to do it
I like A9 so far. It's almost (although not quite) as clean an interface as Google, but I like their site reviews features, and their integration with Alexa/Internet Archive (Amazon owns Alexa, so this is no surprise, but it's still useful).
I'll probably burn some karma for this, but I can't help but feel that there are some out there who wave the privacy flag simply in order to justify, mask or excuse their own anti-social behaviour.
No, this isn't a troll - I just think that not every story that involves someone watching what someone else is doing shoudl have life-ending privacy concerns. In this case, you have to invite the company to watch you in the first place! If I invite, say, a plumber or electrician into my house, I'm going to have to accept the fact that they may see (shock! horror!) me going about my normal everyday business.
If some of these privacy advocates had their way, none of us would talk to or interact with anyone else *ever*.
"You can justify anything by putting it in quotes, adding a famous name and making it a sig" - Albert Einstein