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Ads With Your Name On Them
eldavojohn writes "The NYTimes is running an interesting blog piece on the answers Microsoft, AOL, Yahoo, & Google gave to the question: Can they show you an ad with your name on it? The results: 'Microsoft says it could use only a person's first name [which it doesn't consider personal information]. AOL and Yahoo could use a full name but only on their sites, not the other sites on which they place ads. Google isn't sure; it probably could, but it doesn't know the names of most of its users.' Now whether or not they would use this information is a different story. AOL has no plans to, Yahoo is open to it, and Microsoft has implemented a technological barrier preventing it (despite behavioral and demographic data being served to the ad companies). Although Google might use name information at some point, they don't now do so; nor do they use behavioral or demographic data."
But the real problem isn't that they can *show* who you are, it's that they *know* who you are.
Showing it would just be disclosing our already existing vulnerability.
Well now that the EU have approved the Google / Doubleclick merger, expect ads VERY soon with your name on them ... and possibly a lot more.
A. Let's go ahead and tag it "sometimesyouwanttogowhereeverybodyknowsyourname"
B. Google certainly can show me my name in the ad. Certainly it knows which gmail account I use, and the name on that. It also knows what billing name I used for my Google Checkout purchases. Similar ways of identifying users apply to the other companies. What worries me, is seeing my name on an ad served by somebody I did NOT share my name with.
I don't care if they have ads (that I can't see) addressing me with names that aren't mine.
I do however, care about those people who are less technologically capable, and less privacy conscious being tricked into clicking on ads because they think it is from a friend or whatever (when reading emails especially).
Just because I rarely give out my real name on the web, doesn't mean that there are people who use their real name for everything and don't mind giving it to everyone.
And that's the problem. This won't matter for most people on Slashdot, but it will matter to at least minority of people. And the people with knowledge should promote that knowledge, we should fight against this sort of thing.
(Actually, I suspect that there are a number of people who would get rather angry being addressed by their name when looking at ads. Imagine your TV saying "Hey Joe, I've got a great new beer for you to taste!" or "Hey Joe, I've got a great new computer bit", most people I know would get angry at that. Meh, now I'm starting to ramble.)
I wank in the shower.
Microsoft does not say that your first name is not personal information. Their policy prevents the spread of personally identifiable information, which they define as information which could be used by theirselves or others to connect data (including your first name) to you, the individual. Now, using your first name might be a little dodgy in that you might be the only person in the world with the same first name. But generally speaking, you cannot match a person to their data with only first names.
Yeah, but it seems like this is the sort of thing that won't be influenced by somebody hearing your last name in a store. I mean, if they're going through your trash, they're probably going to find some piece of mail with your last name on it.
Really?
Really?