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?"
What is it about evil corporations?
I mean, amazon already makes a $$$ off books, videos and games, so I ask why do they have to go all 1984 on us. Google have some kind of legitimate excuse already in that advertising is the only real way for google to make money.
Is targeted advertising on the internet really worth it? I mean serious.. how much is the bad PR costing them?
Simon
It's a Feature, not a Bug. Seriously though - that is partly what the search bar is for - to let you keep your search history.
The web-search (a9.com) when you are logged in does the same.
I always want my browser to cache my Google search strings like it caches my web URLs - searching Google from my URL address field is the best Web improvement since Flash. And I want that typeahead history recall option in the address field in *all* my browsers: work, home, phone, friend's computer. So I want a server, but I want *my* server. I don't want Amazon storing it, and not just for privacy: I want all my searches, Google, Amazon, Yahoo, PriceWatch, to show up in the same address field. These competitors can't do that. But a third party can. And a third party can offer encrypted storage and transmission of my search metadata, so they can legitimately promise not to comb my personal search terms, selling me out to targetted advertisers and busybodies.
--
make install -not war
Cool, now you can visit pr0n sites, and *never* be able to delete your history.
Based on your browsing habits, we have chosen to offer great deals on Viagra for you! (sound familiar?)
Slashdot may be influential however the people who tend to install spyware don't know better and are unlikly to read slashdot. I found the google toolbar to be fairly useful when I ran windows. I knew it tracked some data bout what pages I was more active on but that was the entire basis of their page ranking system, and their page ranking system is why many of us like google so much.
:-D ) not all logging/monitoring is bad. It depends on its intended use.
So remember next time you are reading the privicy policy (if anyone does, unlike me
There should be a legislation to ban any company to store browsing, searching records, attributable to specific persons/households/institutions.
If any legislator is in doubt, Slashdot should organize a challange: if any politician is willing to submit a couple of months of this data for content analysis, I can guarantee that I can scare the shit out of them...
Dear elected representatives, anybody upto it?
Who dares to put his/her money where his/her browsing/search data is?
No, because companies only send you free stuff if they think you are going to actually buy something.
From the blurb:
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.
My point was directed at that. We've seen doomsayers on newspapers about GMail and even some dumbass politician who was drafting a law to make it illegal, yet this toolbar has pretty much been launched without even a side comment from them.
---- Take the Space Quiz!
The reason you see so much outrage against voluntary services is that the web is a mass medium. When you have hundreds of thousands of unaware average consumers sign up for a compromising service, it's an approval for the company to require the service for ALL users in the future. It's the same with phone/cable/net bundles. Once you get a critical mass of people on board, companies can force the rest to adopt the same by either cancelling old services, or simply requiring all people to meet the new "standard". Unfortunately, your vote (your dollar) doesn't have meaningful sway in such a liquid environment. The wave of the masses can overrun your choice pretty easily because the only regulator is the market. Voluntary services used to be arbitrated quite well by individual choice, but the speed and ease of signing up, especially by accepting restrictions by default, makes the web an easy place for monopolistic companies to force their standards by stealth.
What about when both ads and useful content are hosted from the same hostname?
1. How long before someone writes an open-source google toolbar clone that will kill popups and allow you to search from the toolbar?
2. Does this exist already? Or, what's the best popup killer for IE that is open-source (so we know it isn't sending browser history to the mother ship)?
I think a lot of the criticism that's been levelled at Google has been motivated by the fact that people, at least on some level, like or even care about Google and don't want to see it go down the drain. Amazon, on the other hand, is just some company...
The simple answer: ordinary people don't care that much. And they won't generate bad PR.
For instance, ordinary people have trouble finding the options to set the home page of MSIE to their liking. Everything seems too complex. Web pages are cluttered with tons of information normal people don't need. (By the way, the Google home page is a good example of design which is easy to grasp for anyone)
Ordinary people are just glad to get away with shopping in Amazon as easy as possible. If Amazon is going to track their behaviour and show them advertisements, there's a good chance they don't care, for example:
This is not to say ordinary people are stupid or anything. Most people don't have time to delve deeply into anything other than what they have to do daily at work or as a hobby. So, all this "online and computer thing" becomes a murky place they don't quite understand. Let alone the intricacies of what the web shop is going to do with the tracking information it gets from you.
Ignorance is bliss, but if you take away that ignorance, if you educate the ordinary people, they will know better. You could try to educate some computer-illiterate persons you know.
For example, you can play with the idea of Google (or any super-popular search engine) storing "everything" it indexes as well as all search strings. Playing along with some other big web companies, it's possible to pinpoint your traces inside Google. Then suppose an anti-bovine military regime takes over the USA. If the Google searches you've done have been "cowherding", "love for cows", "zen of moo" etc. there would be a good chance you'd get a visit from the Homeland Secret Police or such and get thrown to a concentration camp for anti-governmental behaviour (or just thrown there, it's not like they'd need a reason). Try telling something like that to your grandparents or parents, or aunt, or whoever is not well versed with computers. Will they consider it science fiction? Probably, and rightly so. But it's a distantly plausible scenario, nevertheless. A small amount of paranoia is healthy, if only to be aware of the possibilities.
I'm sure you can find other far-fetched examples yourself. For the ordinary person, however, this kind of example is something they cannot imagine themselves. Since they cannot imagine it, they cannot see it as a threat (or a possibility or a good thing). They have to rely on the advice of others.
And remember, you can kill with a hammer or you can build a house. It's the same with any technology. It's not good or evil by itself, but its use defines where it'll land in that rating.
I do not moderate.
OH NO! A9 IS GOING TO TRACK OUR SEARCHES AND BROWSING IN ORDER TO SHOW US STUFF WE MAY LIKE! Come on people. It's not like A9 is going to record passwords that we type, and it's not like they're going to print our credit card numbers. It's not like they know us "in person" and are going to come over and kidnap our children. It's not like a "cookie" (refrence: cookie, first shown definition, item #3), aka A PIECE OF TEXT is going to allow someone to bankrupt our banking accounts. "Privacy concerns" are far overrated (on the interenet at least). Geez people, think. These are not exactly Mr. l33t down the corner who wouldn't mind your credit card, these are companies who actually have a sense of business ethic. (Note: addressing websites, not things such as gator/etc.) Any "big privacy debate" is always with a big company of sorts, and it's nearly always over a text file that's stored away on your hard drive, that you put there by your own choice. Google isn't going to go out there and publish your e-mails. A9 isn't going to provide a page with your name, address, e-mail, and a list of everything you looked for for other companies. Privacy concers are largely overrated. If you actually have something on your computer that would do such things, it's only there because you chose to install it. "No I didn't! It just appeared! I swear I did not install that!" The only people with the issues are the ones that don't know how to use a computer. (*sighs*...well I feel better now :P)
Not you swordboy, but everybody.
If you install a plugin into your browser, it is tracking where you go and what you do, sending that data back to some server somewhere for processing.
Not just Amazon. You can pretty much be sure if you have any browser bar plug-in where you type stuff and it does stuff - you are being tracked. If the one you have isn't doing it yet, the programmers are adding it for the next release.
That is all, carry on.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
For every company that makes the news for eroding our privacy, I am sure that there are dozens if not hundreds of examples that fly under the radar. The economic incentive for companies to gather more information about us is unrelenting while the public's interest will wax and wane. Companies know this - if they are willing to be patient and quietly sit out the initial media storm, then they can eventually do what they want (ie Microsoft and Palladium). Unfortunately, there are too many companies to use media attention to rescue us and I therefore predict that the loss of our privacy will continue unabated unless some tough legislation is passed.
When you install the Google toolbar in IE. It asks you if you want to turn on the PageRank feature which sends information back to google.
I suppose the difference is that google is probably not keeping track of an individual users browsing habits vs just browsing habits, whereas amazon will keep track of your individual habits so they can try to display proper ads to you.
This is absolutely no different than if you're browsing amazon.com's site logged in except that you're searching the web instead of just amazon.
Right?
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
Amazon owns Alexa, which has a Toolbar that sends your browsing habits to Amazon for rankings and analysis.
a9 likely uses Alexa data to generate better search results, and the a9 toolbar likely sends data to Alexa and/or a9 for analysis.
Yep, I think that's right.
Would you be outraged if a brick-n-mortar bookstore slipped you an RFID chip when you went to their store and tracked your movements so their clerks could better recommend books the next time you came in. They could even tack a privacy policy on the wall somewhere that tells you you don't have to accept the chip.
Les Miserables Volume 1 now up with my reading of
Because Amazon tells potential customers upfront what they're doing with the data generated in a search, it isn't a privacy issue.
If you agree to an interview with the local TV news anchor, are you going to whine about privacy when they run the clip at 11 o'clock?
If you don't won't Amazon to store data about you, don't use it.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
In Australia, too. For obscure books and such it's unbeatable, as well as being very very cheap when the exchange rate is good.
Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.
-- Terry Pratchett, Hogfather