Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Search Advertisers Get Personal
Alascom writes "According to this AP report, Microsoft is raising privacy concerns by allowing search advertisers to use personal information. Yusuf Mehdi, a corporate vice president with the MSN unit, said Microsoft has gathered this personal information by tracking users who have logged into its Hotmail e-mail program or other Microsoft Web sites in order to allow advertisers to target their ads to a specific audience."
I know - but because this is Slashdot and we are talking about Microsoft it has to automatically be somehow worse than when another company does it.
There's a world of difference between that IMO.
MSN Hotmail
.NET Passport, which you will use for signing in to your Hotmail account. If you cancel this .NET Passport account, you will automatically cancel your Hotmail account. For more information about .NET Passport, visit http://www.passport.net and read the .NET Passport Privacy Statement.
E NT ARY
Hotmail collects information during the registration process, including first and last name, country, region or state, Zip or post code, time zone, gender, birth date and occupation. You may update your registration information at any time from within your Hotmail account by clicking the "Options" button on the navigation bar, and then clicking on the "Personal" icon.
When you create a Hotmail account, you will also simultaneously create a
Your registration information is used to operate the site, for demographic statistics, and to display appropriate individualized advertisements. New users will receive a Hotmail welcome letter explaining the features provided by the service. Hotmail may also send periodic member letters, from which you may not unsubscribe without closing your account, to announce important service changes, new features, technical issue updates and information about other products and services.
Hotmail is concerned about controlling unsolicited commercial e-mail, or "spam." Hotmail will not sell, lease or rent its member lists to any third parties. While Microsoft continues to actively review and implement new technology, such as expanded filtering features, there is no currently available technology that will totally prevent the sending and receiving of unsolicited e-mail. Using tools such as the Inbox Protector and being cautious about the sharing of your e-mail address while online will help reduce the amount of unsolicited e-mail you receive. For more information on how to best use Hotmail's tools, please contact abuse@hotmail.com.
http://privacy1.msn.com/fullnotice.armx#SUPPLEM
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How .NET Passport Will Not Use Your Personal Information
Use of Shared Information by .NET Passport Participating Sites and Services .NET Passport participating sites and services with whom you choose to share the information can use it for a variety of purposes. These can include personalizing your experience at their sites and reducing registration time by using information in your .NET Passport account to pre-fill their registration forms. .NET Passport participating sites and services may share your personal information and/or unique identifier with third parties in order to fulfill a service or transaction you may have requested. In addition, participating sites may share your personal information, but not your Unique ID, with other third parties as permitted by their privacy policies.
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My fiance still uses hotmail and nothing I do will convince her to stop. Even worse her account was never upgraded from 2MB even though MS announced several months ago (last year?) that all users would be upgraded to 250MB.
And, in terms of showing the ads, and parsing through your mail there...how is that different than a spam filter? Does your ISP have a privacy policy that says they won't read your email? I can't even find the privacy policy of my ISP!
Tell the truth and you won't have so much to remember.
They can look thru my hotmail account all they like. It only ever gets used when I need to provide a valid email address to a website I'm visiting. This way, my home email doesn't get flooded with the porn ads/medications ads that seem to find their way to me after a visit amazon, hahaha.