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."

Comments

Where everybody knows your $name

[halcyon1234]

This reminds me of the old BBS days. Someone would figure out the BBS code for displaying variables, and start posting messages with stupid things like "If your name is on this list, you will be banned: Joe, Frank123, [$name], ...".

The computer doesn't know your name. It echoes a variable.