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."

Comments

Why not?

[haqrboi]

They're going to show us ads no matter what, at least this gives a chance they might be a little more relevant.

Re:Why not?

[AnonymousClown]

Yeah!

I'm tired of getting those ads in the lower right hand corner of those girls that say, "I'm hot for you!" or "I'm ready to have sex." only to see that they're several towns over. I want the sluts in my local area!

Re:Why not?

[betterunixthanunix]

Why should we be giving up on privacy for the benefit of marketing companies? If I need to find local business, I look at a directory of local businesses, so what do I gain by having advertisements thrown in my face?

Re:Why not?

[characterZer0]

We are going to block ads no matter what, so why do we care how relevant they are?

Re:Why not?

[L4t3r4lu5]

As a letter:

"Dear Business Owner,

I noticed that you have started to advertise through my ISPs Zip+4 locality based advertising system. Unfortunately, I believe that this system is intrusive and an infringement not only on my right to privacy and anonymity, but also encroaches on the data allowance I pay for which is already prohibitively capped by my ISP.

Thanks to the government allowing the ISP a monopoly of the "last mile" of the connection, I cannot switch my ISP to one not offering this intrusive advertising scheme. I can, however, refuse to offer my business to those who make use of it.

Sincerely,

A lost customer."

Re:Why not?

[Shakrai]

Not quite. Zip+4 narrows it down to no more than 100 possibilities, but you need to know the delivery point to get the exact address. The USPS represents every single deliverable address in the country with an eleven digit number. Five digits of zip code, four digits of +4 extension and two digits of delivery point. You can find your delivery point code by using the USPS zip code finder and clicking on "mailing industry information".

There are a few exceptions to this rule of course. Most PO boxes have a unique zip+4 code, so the delivery point is redundant for them.

Re:Why not?

[Shakrai]

Ah, you beat me to it.

It's amusing to see how Adult Friend Finder and similar services compute your city based on IP address. There's a small hamlet about 50 miles from where I live called Tunnel. I think a grand total of 50 people live there. If the AFF ads are any indication it would seem that 49 of them are extremely attractive women who are looking for a good time. It's my dream to move there one of these days.... ;)

Finally, some relevant ads

[Jurily]

Too bad I use Adblock.

Awesome

[NoZart]

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....

Dear Vendors, Stop breaking the Internet

[Fortunato_NC]

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.

This is worse

[AltairDusk]

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.

Well, crap like that does not fly with me

[bleh-of-the-huns]

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.

Re:SSL

[Lachlan Hunt]

SSL won't help guard against this at all. If you visit a site that embeds an advertisement, the ad provider still obtains your IP address, and they can still query participating ISPs for the postal code of the user at that address.

Easily blocked by techies?

[rainmayun]

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?

re: Just go away

[King_TJ]

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?

Re:Tor plus some similar tech.

[BiggerIsBetter]

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.

It's a price for free sites I'm willing to pay

[Ice Tiger]

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.

That's the way it was.

[professorguy]

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.

That's stupid...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:But, you don't have privacy...

[Mr. Slippery]

but personally, and most of the world, would actually rather have things targeted at them with actual relevancy.

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.

But that isn't really the main point, the main point is you already never had any privacy when you decided to stay connected to society, live with it or leave society.

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.

But the simple fact remains that if you live in the walls of society, you are expected to make sacrifices in freedoms and privacy in order to keep it stable.

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.