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Coming Soon, Web Ads Tailored To Your Zip+4
On the heels of Apple's intention to collect and sell detailed location data comes word that Juniper is putting together technology that will allow any ISP to present you to advertisers by your Zip+4. An anonymous reader sends this snip from Wired: "Your Internet service provider knows where you live, and soon, it will have a way to sell your zip code to advertisers so they can target ads by neighborhood. If your local pizza joint wants to find you, they will have a new way to do that. National advertisers will be able to market directly to neighborhoods with like characteristics across the whole country using demographic data they've been gathering for decades. ... Juniper Networks, which sells routers to ISPs, plans to start selling them add-on technology from digital marketer Feeva that affixes a tag inside the HTTP header, consisting of each user's 'zip+4' — a nine-digit zipcode that offers more accuracy than five-digit codes. Juniper hopes to sell the software to ISPs starting this summer, having announced a partnership with Feeva earlier this year."
They're going to show us ads no matter what, at least this gives a chance they might be a little more relevant.
Almost every web page I visit seems to know where I live down to the town or suburb. I think we slipped down this slope a long time ago.
IPv6 might wipe that database clean effectively, but it won't take long to repopulate.
Too bad I use Adblock.
So the fake hot lesbians who want to hump me are now directly on my block? BRB, ringing on random doors holding a printout of some adult friend finder banner....
Seriously, guys. You already f'ed up DNS beyond recognition, now you want to break http, too? Someone at Juniper needs to kick the marketers out of the engineering department.
Blogging Weight Loss, Distance Education, and more at verlin.com
... FTW. Let's see them munge the headers with that.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Even more reason to use SSL for every site. Not like I needed another.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
I do not want this. Go away with your ever more intrusive advertising. GO AWAY!
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
I for one am not happy about my ISP who I pay to provide me with internet access and who I expect to protect my privacy doling out my information to advertisers. Advertisers figuring it out with the help of third parties is one thing, I can't hold the ISP responsible for that but this is simply unacceptable.
Aside from the fact that this is already being done (maybe not to zip+4 level). Ads for things where I live aren't as relevant to me as ads from my purchasing and surfing history. The restaurants around where I live suck, I have to drive a bit of a distance to get to the few local things I find useful. So in that regard, pure location info isn't going to be a particularly good hit for me. If advertisers knew my shopping patterns, they'd do a lot better job, and it's just a matter of time until they do.
Sheldon
While I may or may not be able to block said targeted advertising, I can guaranty that I will explicitly boycott any companies that use such services like this to target me. I do the same thing with telemarketers and those people who leave door tags on my door. If I want something, I will go find it.
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
If you have to have advertising, why not have advertising that is relevant?
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Too bad I don't have an iPhone. Oh wait that's a good thing.
Divide a cake by zero. Is it still a cake?
This should be easily handled with a browser plugin.
For those of you saying "browse more with SSL", this is primarily going to benefit site owners with more targeted ads, who will know it doesn't work with SSL.
For those of you saying "use Adblock", that won't stop site owners from using this information for other purposes. Some sites will already have this information, particularly if you do e-commerce with them. But others may not. Do you really want midgetporn.com to know where you live?
You can yell all you want for the advertisers to "just go away", but the problem is, the collective "we" that use the Internet DEMANDED that monster, with our insistence on free services everywhere.
I don't like the ad banners a bit, but I also realize I'm grown used to the idea of visiting my choice of tech or news sites without paying monthly subscription fees. I use several free email sites, and I've got a places that host my photo collections for free and keep backups of 2GB or so of my files for free. I've got some (again free) software on my iPad that lets me send and receive unlimited SMS messages over it, using a new local phone number they assigned me. Google is willing to assign me yet another free local phone number to handle voice mail services for me, au gratis. Need a quick translation of some text from one language to another, or maybe just a conversion between units of measure? Free sites out there give you those features too. Plenty of other message forums let you share info on your favorite hobby or cheat codes and walkthroughs for your favorite games. The list goes on and on. Do you REALLY think all these things should just be done out the kindess of people's hearts, despite the ongoing expense of hosting them?
In a galaxy far away, even... Obligatory XKCD
So location specific ads that I still won't see because I have Adblock?
I wonder when the advertising industry will figure out the current amount of advertising has well exceeded the point of diminishing returns and is making consumers go out of there way to get rid of it.
========
CINC, 4th Penguin Legion
Really, I guess a technical way around this is to use Tor. And for everyone to have a Tor exit node. Screw the corporations and their fucking advertising!
I agree in principle, but when advertisers piss the technical public off so much that we actually hate kiddie porn less, only then you'll see the uptake of Tor and FreeNet.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
Someone has to pay the bills for running a 'free' site and that is generally advertising.
If that advertising is localised and potentially more relevant for me then I don't mind 'paying' this price. This is why even though I have the option I don't disable advertising on Slashdot.
"Because we are not employing at entry level, offshoring will kill our industry stone dead."
I've been on the internet since 1984. Back then, there was all kinds of discussion and many, many 'services' and info. And guess how it all got there? Why, what do you know? It was done out of the kindness of people's hearts.
Then about 1988, the marketers showed up. It's been downhill ever since.
So can humans do things for each other just to be nice? Yes, as long as those humans don't include marketing assholes.
As Anderton walks in the door, gets his new eyes scanned, and we hear a voice say:
STORE VOICE: Hello, Mr. Yakamoto! Welcome back to the Gap.
STORE VOICE: How'd those assorted tank tops work out for you?
STORE VOICE: Come on in and see how good you look in one of our new Winter sweaters.
semantics are everything!
Does the use of Zip+4 strike anyone as a little odd? After all, it allows for 1E+09 entities, and the population of the US is only around 3E+08. Sounds like a serial number to me.
I fail to see the business model behind this. They are selling a service to ISPs, which will do DPI, and add an HTTP header to traffic, most likely coming from the ISPs own database. (Only the ISP knows where its cables are terminated.) This is done for the benefit of third party advertisers, who, at least today, are not paying the ISP for the tracking info. I suppose that the info could be encrypted, with the key available to the ad providers who subscribe to a service, and the ISP get kickbacks, but otherwise, I fail to see why an ISP would want to invest in this service.
ISPs are drooling over the prospect of turning the internet into a premium service and charging both by the bit and by the site. They have already employed packet inspection and traffic shaping to control my usage as they see fit. Now they might start buying technology to insert information into my data to help marketers target me specifically (but it's not an invasion of privacy!).
What next? A marketing service in which they auction my full name and address to the highest bidder then redirect all requests to his site?
The internet thrives because it is open. It encourages the free exchange of ideas and culture. It brings people together from all across the world for various purposes and promotes community. If we make it resilient enough, it can be a great tool to promote freedom and democracy in regions where it is suppressed. It is currently transforming our society for the better and will continue to do so if allowed to do so.
Stop trying to exploit it.
Stop trying to control it.
Stop trying to kill it.
I don't think tor will help you much.
The packets have to pass through the ISP routers on the way to anywhere.
They will modify the header of all requests, even those through tor.
Maybe an updated tor node could strip that header info out, but that would depend on at least one tor node in your chain having the right update.
FTFA as an example of what it could be used for: "For instance, HBO could partner with an ISP to verify, at the network level, that a certain user subscribes to HBO, and so should be allowed to watch its programming for free on Hulu. Users might be annoyed that they can't use a username and password to watch the channel from a computer outside their homes, but content providers will appreciate the way this system can prevent users from sharing accounts."
It would be bullsh*t if they did that. I watch Hulu BECAUSE I can't afford to subscribe to HBO. I participate in the Hulu "ad tailoring" and don't mind the ads they play because, again, I CAN'T AFFORD to have a cable bill AND a high speed internet bill. I know a lot of people are in the same situation. If they did institute that I'd probably read a lot more, that's for sure.
The vast majority of my zip are older than me, NRA members, die-hard Republicans, less computer-savvy than my 11yo daughter, and retired from factory work. They can blast ads for "Guns and Ammo" and the latest Ford F-150 all they want - I ain't buyin'.
Jesus told him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me. - John 14:6 NLT
Do not mess with my trousers!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Service goes one place, billing goes another. Guess which one they use when they sell their subscriber list? Yep. Billing. Which doesn't even happen to be in the same state.
I don't think my ISP is competent enough to do targeted ads on the zip+4 for the service address when they've got a different address that gets them money.
hmm so in other words we will never see the uptake of tor and freenet
"Hell, go start your own society where you all have 100% privacy."
Nobody expects us to have total privacy -- no such society has ever existed. However, there are certainly people who would prefer the other extreme: no privacy at all. We are no longer talking about necessary sacrifices of privacy, we are talking about excessive and deliberate efforts to erode any privacy at all.
"Also, don't label all advertisers and marketers under one blanket label please.
Some companies are actually decent and just want to help people find the things they want.
You mentioned one of them already, the local directories of businesses in your area."
Sorry about that, but it is becoming increasingly rare to see marketing companies that are satisfied with traditional approaches to helping people find what they are looking for. True, a local directory is a marketing effort of sorts, and when run by a business that business is certainly a marketing company.
Palm trees and 8
From the article: "affixes a tag inside the HTTP header"
So I assume they are snooping on all traffic on port 80 (and maybe 443) and insert their data into the HTTP header.
Well - we need to move away from a www based on port 80, and start using random ports to access websites. I don't know how to do this, but maybe somebody else does ...
Meaning - webservers need to listen on random ports and search engines need to store the port info and stop assuming port 80 (or 443) as the default. I don't think google et. al. can handle URLs with a port number in it.
This year it is expected that online marketing that targets local consumers like Yodle or adneedle is going to increase 31% in the market place. Whether ISPs sell zips +4 or not you are already tracked just by traffic alone.
Every week I get a huge, thick swath of papers of local advertisements and coupons in my mailbox at home. It goes straight from my mailbox to my recycle bin and it's a huge waste of resources to print all that crap, waste fossil fuels in taking to my house and wasting more fossil fuels to have the recycling truck pick it up. There probably are some useful local businesses that I'd like to know about. I'd rather see ads for local businesses that I can support than national chains.
For anyone that's complaining about this, go ahead and put your money where your mouth is if you're so emotionally fragile that an advertisement will just *ruin* your day.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
I'm not suprised by this. Companies exist for the sole purpose to make money, and advertising has always paid well. But isn't this a major invasion of privacy?
Targeted ads are only the beginning. Soon, I expect ISP's will be selling your surfing habits as well. Here's where this person lives. Here are the websites they visit. Here are the terms they have searched this week. Here is what they have purchased online. Etc, etc.
Everyone worries about the government having this kind of information. Meanwhile, businesses are quietly gathering this data, and will sell it to whoever wants it. All completely legal, and we are paying them to do it as well.
Proverbs 21:19
They will modify the header of all requests, even those through tor.
That would be most impressive since tor encrypts all of it's traffic right up to the exit node......
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Slashdot also allows me to turn off advertising, but I don't take that option, either, because I like supporting the site.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Most of modern advertising is an attempt to control your behavior -- it's applied psychology, a weak form of mind control designed to get you to buy stuff you do not need or want, to keep feeding the unsustainable society of consumption.
And you'd like it to be more targeted and effective? Fsck that.
Uh, no. What you are saying makes no sense. Up until the late 20th century, for all of human history you had privacy as soon as you went home and closed the door, or even walked out into a field away from other people. Freedom from company, which was easily achieved, meant freedom from observation. But now we have machines to do the observation.
Your "live with it or leave" declaration is irrational. In order to make society livable and sustainable, we must construct it with respect for basic human needs. Privacy is one of them. Respect privacy or watch society collapse.
No. Again, what you are saying makes no sense. A working society is a network whereby people expand their choices and thus have greater freedoms. And a respect for privacy is one of the fundamental requirement for a society to flourish.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
That would be most impressive since tor encrypts all of it's traffic right up to the exit node......
I think he's suggesting that the traffic from the exit nodes would get modified. So you'd still get ads, only now they'd be the wrong ads.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
My mail box (the one by the road, in meatspace) is full of local ads for things I throw away, sometimes the amount of actual paper spam to real mail is 10:1. It's ALREADY bad. All the local grocery stores that know my address by my little card I scan in for discounts, and every little shop in town gives me paper crap.
I drag a garbage can next to my mailbox and keep it there so I can sort faster.
If this catches on, advertisers will stop targetting people with the paper spam (they pay for) without first determining if they have a chance to sell to me.
but.... I block ads, use encryption, avoid a lot of general spyware, and practice safe webbing. What they know about me is based almost solely on amazon, web sites I bought from in the past, and google. meaning I'm gonna get adds for things I already bought, and will instantly toss or targetted ads for geek stuff in ways I don't mind.
I see this as DROPPING the amount of paper that winds up in the round file.
I do however pity the joe sixpack that doesn't know how to ad block, or visits intrusive sites like porn, It's gonna hit this poor guy like an explicitly embarrassing, ad-covered bus.
I think you give privacy too much importance. I can live with machine observation for the purpose of better serving and meeting my needs. It's the human abuse of that data that is the problem, and privacy has always just been a way to prevent those abuses.
If people would just stop abusing others for their own personal gain we wouldn't have an issue with a profile shared ubiquitously for our own benefit. I guess it's mostly a moot issue since privacy is much more attainable than expecting to be treated with dignity and respect.
Advertising or paywalls aren't the only alternatives for professional media. Publishers should be able to earn income directly from the help they give their users. Slashdot already does this though Amazon affiliate links.
But just more and more are finding advertising useless because it pushes agendas in an increasingly annoying way, affiliate links still push a single vendor. Slashdot should be able get paid for hosting a helpful review, no matter where the book was bought, or even if a bad review helped someone choose a different book.
This is my vision for a 3rd revenue source for publishers, which can subsidise non-product-related journalism, just as classifieds once paid for foreign and investigative journalism.
Personally I'd prefer to see ads like these more than just the generic banner ads for god-knows-what. I think this would be a way for small businesses to really gain some advantage in the advertising market over the larger companies with massive budgets.
And the only PRESCRIPTION, is more COWBELL
I hate adverts. If I am going to be annoyed by adverts it is better to be annoyed by adverts from people within punching range.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
We give you content/services/Internet access for free, you let us sell your information to advertisers - fair. We give you content/services/Internet access, you give us money - fair. We give you content/services/Internet access, you give us money, we *still* sell your information to advertisers - not fair.
Let me google that for you. Or repost the link from a couple of posts back.
I don't think anyone wanted to suggest you'd get rid of ads (that's what adblock is for). What you'd get rid of is the ability of the web server's owner to find out where you live.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
If this becomes a problem, I'll just route all my traffic through an ssh proxy on my VPS. Let them tailor their ads to the datacenter in Dallas. Not that I will be seeing them with AdBlock on anyway..
Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power. -- Mussolini
>Slashdot already does this though Amazon affiliate links.
The what? Didn't know they had those. I see the ads every day though.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
And it's easy to do that already: Just install a browser with HTML5's geolocation support, and enable it, click "yes" when something wants to know where you are.
Contrast that with your ISP injecting a header into your HTTP traffic, which should be considered a violation of Net Neutrality.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Y'know what? We've reached the point where I believe that kiddie porn is actually the lesser blight on society, when compared to this relentless and incessant push to monetize everything.
To hell with the downsides. The more Freenet and TOR are used, the better.
I am not that familiar with http headers, but wouldn't it be possible to add your own http-headers. So add 20 tags with 20 different zip codes? Firefox plugin?
If it were truly used the way it should be, zip+4 ads could be actually useful - I try as much as I can to spend my money at local independent businesses, and being told about, say, a pizza place close by with online ordering would be informative. It would be like those ValPak coupons I get every so often, but (hopefully) more relevant.
The problem is, it won't be used that way. It'll be used to try and convince me that there're local hotties hungry for my junk, just waiting for me to input my credit card number. Person-to-person, individualized marketing is an amazing, appreciated thing; being hit by an adult friend finder driveby is a waste of electrons.
There is a simple solution to this, once you realize some basic facts:
1) Who is the customer for the advertiser? Not the ISP, sure as hell not your the schmuck they feed the ad to - it is the company buying the ads.
2) What is the motivation for the ISP to do this? Money from the advertiser to support this.
3) What is the motivation of Juniper to do this? Money from the ISP to buy the gear, and money from the advertiser to buy the gear to process this.
So:
Step 1: We need several sites that can detect that these headers are being added (hey Slashdot - how about showing a warning when you detect these headers?)
Step 2: We geeks need to make a big stink whenever we detect an ISP adding these headers - and make sure the norms on the ISP are aware of how much of their privacy is being invaded.
Step 3: We need to identify which companies are selling products using this technology, and do our best to see they get negative publicity for it.
Attack the money the ISP gets for this - make it cost the ISP, rather than profiting the ISP - and the ISPs won't deploy this technology.
Attack the money the companies buying the ads hope to make, by creating negative press and hitting their sales, and most of them won't pay for it.
Attack the money the advertisers make, by discouraging businesses from buying ads and by discouraging ISPs from selling the information, and the advertisers will (grudgingly) walk away from the idea.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Once again, another reason for network neutrality. It should be illegal to modify my HTTP requests. That's not what my computer sent: the job of a router, and an ISP, is to blindly pass-on what I send. The phone company doesn't insert words into my telephone conversations - that's illegal. Yet it is somehow okay to insert information into my web pages? How about my emails? Will that be next?
True, but you're only looking at the "how many bytes can I move/store for my dollar" aspect of things. The problem is, everything on the content side was exponentially increasing at the same time!
EG. Despite the vast improvement in Internet transfer speeds over what my 2400 or 9600BPS modem could do - I still wind up able to read the typical web-based message forum at about the same speed I could read online BBS forum content back then! Why? Because when all the content was straight ASCII text, even 2400BPS could move it across at least as quickly as I could read it. But now? We've got all these graphics files and HTML overhead that has to download along-side the text content, to make the web forum look pretty and properly formatted.
(That doesn't even factor in the fact that a typical Internet message forum probably runs on a server handling 50 or more simultaneous users trying to view the content. Back in the BBS days, a computer usually just had to serve ONE caller at a time, or MAYBE 2-4 of them as things progressed and people added more phone lines, etc.)