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Online Ads, Privacy Remain In FTC Crosshairs
AC95 writes "The FTC wants to give users a browser-based tool for opting out of online behavioral tracking, a proposal that has privacy advocates cheering and online advertisers up in arms. A key issue, says FTC attorney Loretta Garrison, is that while most consumers know they're tracked online, they don't fully appreciate how much information is collected. Tim O'Reilly, founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media, worries about knee-jerk legislation criminalizing mistakes that are an inherent part of applying any new technology."
Really Tim O'Reilly? Maybe criminalizing mistakes that affect the identity of citizens MIGHT make you more aware so those mistakes don't happen again.
Give a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day. But light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
Google is a data miner. Although I know they collect information, I also use their services for free. I understand it's a trade of services for something of value, so I'm not totally opposed to it, although it does give me pause when I use google to search and I have a google account. Although it's easy to claim they don't tie my account info to my searches, It would be a goldmine (literally) if they did so. I find it hard to believe they aren't collecting more than I'm aware of. I applaud this intent by the FTC. After all, Google will still have billions who never install such a plugin, or turn such a feature to exclude them from data mining on in their browser.
If you can't fight it, exploit it. I have actually gotten some pretty cool (free) stuff by misrepresenting myself to various sites online (up to the legal limit, of course).Everything from free Amazon gift cards, to free electronics. I even got a free mobile phone (with service paid for 6 months) once because I claimed I had a business with over 100 employees and that I made over $100K yearly (that was back in 1998 when phones were pricier and I only made about 1/3 of that). Free magazine subscriptions, free enterprise web hosting, free lawnmowers, it's all there for the taking for those willing to game the game.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
It's hard to be objective about whether to want to protect my privacy or not given I have zero idea of what Google's profile of me looks like. I imagine everyone has some threshold level where they say "Enough is enough, I'm not willing to sacrifice THAT info for free services." I would guess we all probably fall into two camps- either dramatically underestimating or dramatically overestimating the level of information stored in the profile. Without better specifics in the hands of the populace about the level of personal details, it doesn't seem to me that a fair level of regulation can possibly be drafted by public officials.
Wrong! You are confusing just plain advertising with "behavior tracking".
I have no problem with advertising, Google's or anyone else's. You can still visit websites that advertise. It's the TRACKING that is at issue here.
It's not either/or. Companies can (and have for hundreds of years now) advertise without user tracking. Besides, poll after poll have shown that most people do not want "targeted" advertising anyway!
Advertisers didn't like the idea of a do-not-call list to restrict telemarketers from calling/harassing consumers who didn't want to be bothered either, but people are still pretty happy with it. Now advertising companies are collecting (and even selling) a lot of personal data about consumers who don't even know such data exists, and advertisers are upset that the government might give them a way to opt out of their system. How is this any different? Also, I know this isn't how things are done in Washington, but in a democracy shouldn't the government be answering to its concerned citizens instead of just focusing on what makes things easy/profitable/convenient/one-sided for large corporations?
What about tracking the IP? I use Linux and my roommate uses Windows. I have had to search for drivers and technical information many many times for Linux. One weekend I reinstalled Windows for my roommate. On a fresh install under Windows I began to search for drivers. Google's results kept taking me to sites for Linux drivers.
I only accept cookies from sites I trust. Yes this sometimes causes problems on untrusted sites - which gives me further reason to not trust them! If a web designer does not anticipate "no cookie" users, their intention is to give your privacy a good shafting.
need a free COBOL editor for Windows?
I got a taste of this when I went looking online for vacations. I saw "club med" ads on every page I went to for a good two weeks. It got really creepy after a while. I went away but NOT to Club Med.
I'm all for the FTC/government cracking down on behavioural tracking, but how would such a system work and how could it even be policed?
In the case of the Do-Not-Call system:
How would such a system translate to the web? (And I say the web as opposed to the internet as a whole, since the web seems to be where the battlefront is at the moment.)
Possiblities:
What about enforcement? How can you tell if someone is tracking you? How can you provably report it to the government so that they can do something about it?
Unfortunately it sounds like a bit of a pipe dream to me.
I use and recommend Adblock Plus, Better Privacy, CustomizeGoogle, Flashblock, NoScript and RequestPolicy. This combination allows for extraordinarily fine grained control over what sort of information is tracked from session to session. Now, if you log into a site using an account controlled by that site then they are going to track some clicks regardless of what addons are used, but if you are logging in with a named account then you probably already knew that.