Slashdot Mirror
The Advertisers are Watching You
pcause noted that the New York Times is running a story about the information being collected about you by internet advertisers. Of course much of this is not news to you, but it's important that the mainstream media is more aware of the issues surrounding this.
Sounds like the 4th largest bank in the U.S. exposing me to no less than 12 single pixel tracking images from the likes of doubleclick, ru4, advertising.com etc. when I want to login followed by tracking by an outside source while using the "secure" area of the site(hooray for AdBlock). I complained and complained. I finally received a response from the office of CEO Ken Thompson telling me to piss up a rope. I am no longer a customer.
At the risk of straying off-topic, I'd like to see a "mainstream media" story about the different security risks/exposures between internet purchases, phone purchases, and in-store purchases. Tracking behavior is certainly easier online, but cutting people out of the loop does good things for security. Although imperfect, I trust automated billing a lot more than inmates working phone banks or high-schoolers swiping cards at their summer employment and throwing away paper receipts.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
Feel free to correct me if anyone has actual knowledge/data. I reject the argument that white-listing is stupid because advertisers suck - I know they do but, if they pay sites I like to provide content to me without forcing me to subscribe, I'll put up with them. But, if white-listing slashdot (et al.) really does not help them at all, then I'll clean out my white-list.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
You do what you want... but don't try to tell me that I'm not using Adblock "responsibly" The advertisers had their chance with me. What I got was pop-overs, pop-unders, drive by installs and more impressions of X10 cameras than I will ever care about. I got ads that blocked the content, that played loud sounds, that floated all over the page. Adblock is a response to irresponsible behavior by the advertisers. I use it and I use it on full. There was content before the ads and there will be content after the ads. There won't be subscriptions, because that is the kiss of death for a content provider on the internet. But by all means go ahead and whitelist if you wish. As for me I'm done with the constant barrage of ads. 90% of them are from spammy, sketchy vendors that I would never buy from anyway.
Sites that want to make ad revenue work need to rethink their usage and their suppliers. Ads can be successful and desirable. If you doubt that take a look at the average Sunday paper. I purchase that each Sunday and pay more for it BECAUSE of the ads. Talk about a successful model. Content providers are going to need to provide something more than your second hand guilt argument to get me to turn off Adblock and they have no one to blame but themselves.