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Parental Control Software Datamines Kids' Online Conversations
An AP report reveals that web-monitoring software from Sentry and FamilySafe, both developed by EchoMetrix Inc., is harvesting data from kids' online chats, trying to determine their opinions on games, movies, and music. The data is then sold to other companies for advertising purposes.
"In June, EchoMetrix unveiled a separate data-mining service called Pulse that taps into the data gathered by Sentry software to give businesses a glimpse of youth chatter online. While other services read publicly available teen chatter, Pulse also can read private chats. It gathers information from instant messages, blogs, social networking sites, forums and chat rooms. ... Parents who don't want the company to share their child's information to businesses can check a box to opt out. But that option can be found only by visiting the company's Web site, accessible through a control panel that appears after the program has been installed. It was not in the agreement contained in the Sentry Total Home Protection program The Associated Press downloaded and installed Friday."
...if you use Microsoft Windows. The Microsoft ecosystem has always been a haven for unscrupulous usurpers of the desktop for profit, and user-experience, business ethics, and software quality be damned.
The reason malware and adware is so prevalent on that platform is that their ilk have never been discouraged by Microsoft. In fact, quite the opposite. As long as it profits the vendor or Microsoft, everything is permitted.
The only guideline for Windows software appears to be that the software programmer must be the same person as the designer, must be fresh out of college, must have an undeveloped sense of aesthetics, and must be replaceable by some other fresh graduate who will work for half the salary.
A love of layered tabs also helps.