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Google Patents Detecting, Tracking, Targeting Kids
theodp writes "A newly-issued Google patent for Rendering Advertisements With Documents Having One or More Topics Using User Topic Interest describes how to detect the presence of children by 'using evidence of sophistication determined using user actions' and tracking their behavior using the Google Toolbar and other methods to deliver targeted ads. Which is interesting, since the Google Terms of Service supposedly prohibit the use of Services by anyone 'not of legal age.' The inventor is Google Principal Scientist Krishna Bharat, who is a co-inventor of another pending Google patent for inferring searchers' ethnicity, reading level, age, sex and income (and storing it all)." Ok I'll be the first to admit that this is greek to me. Someone smart figure this out and post a comment translating patentese into english.
ftfp: "Different sets of one or more ads can be associated with the different levels of user expertise in a give topic. Using evidence of sophistication determined using user actions for example, ads targeted for novices, average sophistication, or experts (e.g., children, tourists, scientists) may be served and rendered."
This is simply an extension of what google already does at the page level. Instead of settling for targeting ads based on the contents of the page, google would like to tailor ads based on what the user is specifically looking at on a page. The above quote denotes the fact that they are likely to find correlations among certain demographic and age groups.
"In this example, one or more ads associated with topic 1 might originally be rendered in association with the document 1410. If a user were to follow the link 1414a, interest scores of one or more ads associated with topic 2 could be increased. In this case, upon returning back to document A 1410 from document B 1420, one or more ads associated with topic 2 might now be rendered in association with the document 1410."
The previous quote from the patent shows how google would use your recent browser history along with whatever tags they associate with a page to serve 'relevant' ads. This is similar to what I expect google to do with the doubleclick data they will be receiving shortly.
On a more ominous note, the following claim is a bit unsettling and reminds me of http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/21/1511240. Who's letting all these guys control cameras in our houses?
"9. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 wherein the actions of the user monitored are selected from a group of user actions consisting of (a) cursor positioning, (b) cursor dwell time, (c) document item selection, (d) user eye direction, (e) user facial expressions, (f) user expressions, and (g) express user topic interest input. "
Ummm, somebody at homeland security just wet their lips....