Apple Patents Polluting Facebook, Google Profiles

theodp writes "On Tuesday, the USPTO granted Apple an odd patent on Techniques to Pollute Electronic Profiling, which presumably might concern the targeted ad revenue-hungry folks at Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn (and their investors). The patent, apparently assigned to Apple from Novell, is designed to thwart 'dataveillance techniques from automated Litter Brothers,' including lawful targeted and aggressive marketing tactics. Creating cloned identities that are 'intentionally populated with divergent information [e,g., fake phone numbers, email accounts, credit or debit card accounts],' explains the patent, 'circumvents the reliability and usefulness of dataveillance used by network eavesdroppers and effectively provides greater privacy over the network to principals.'"

Comments

So Apple

[MitchDev]

has a patent for lying and fooling people?

Re:So Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

And they're terrorists! Who else would want to evade profiling?

Re:So Apple

[dc29A]

I claim prior art circa 1996. My real name is not Pig Benis. I don't live in Fucking, Austria neither.

Re:So Apple

[imagined.by]

Apple has a patent to fool bots that aggregate people's data.

Interesting how even this can be spun to something negative.

Re:So Apple

[dav1dc]

Does that mean every time someone fills in an online form using bullsh!t information; said person is now obliged to pay Apple a royalty?!?! :p

Re:So Apple

[Pf0tzenpfritz]

We know who you are. Very funny alias, Mr Willy Ficken from Petting, Germany...

Makes Sense Now

[Anonymous Coward]

So yesterday, we see how Steve Jobs wanted all of Google's products to be integrated with Google+, presumably so that they could make things more relevant through social interactions. Then today comes the Apple patent for polluting a social profile and making that information useless. I guess his strategy of "going thermonuclear war" is still alive...

Re:Makes Sense Now

[localman57]

I don't think so. It sounds more like a MacroVision strategy. Come up with a scheme you want to carry out. Then envision all possible anti-scheme methods, and patent them when you patent your original scheme. That way no one can anti-scheme your scheme.

I don't know if evil or good.

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Makes me wonder if this is evil or good.

Evil because it's fucking with Google. This is squarely a jab to google's breadbasket. If WWDC wasn't a big "fuck you" to google, this certainly is.

Good because this is anonymity to the next level. Defeating snooping from big business to try to sell us shit we don't need.

Evil though because this idea should belong to everyone.

TBH, I'm surprised the EFF didn't figure this one out sooner.

Re:I don't know if evil or good.

[mcmonkey]

Evil because it's fucking with Google.

Why is fucking with Google evil?

And can someone please translate "dataveillance techniques from automated Litter Brothers" to English?

Re:I don't know if evil or good.

[EasyTarget]

While Google undoubtedly does some evil, the good they do outweighs it in my opinion.

I was reading their privacy/censorship report yesterday and thinking how nice it would be if Apple, FB, MS, Twitter, Linkedin, etc. all did the same.

Indeed, on the same day that Google was publicising and enumerating how much governments intrude on Privacy; the US government was refusing to say, even in broad numbers, how many US citizens enjoyed a NSA snoop session recently.

Re:I don't know if evil or good.

[jo_ham]

So does Apple. So do many companies. It doesn't give either Apple nor Google a free pass when they do something unpleasant though.

What is it good for

[DesertBlade]

Skimmed through the patent and all I can figure out is that our master profile stays the same, but you will have a bunch of fake ones. This does not give you a whole lot of privacy to the user since you are still tied to the master, but makes it harder for facebook/google to created targeted ads and make it harder for someone to find the real you. Unless you are actively using all these clones then Big Brother is going to know who you are. Next there will be a patent to filter out these clones.

Prior Art.

[EasyTarget]

I've been doing this for 15 years now, ever since my first spam email lured me to my first spam site.
I own several domains and give different emails; faked whenever I don't care if I never hear from the admen again.
I invent (fictitious, but coherent) persona's for myself when answering marketeers dumb questions. I regularly complete 'Can we tediously interrupt you to gather marketing info' wonkery with entirely faked data. If I care about a website, or think a company is treating me properly, then I help them help me by being broadly honest, all others get systematically and deliberately misinformed.

My 2 point plan; which I heartily recommend:
1) Reward honesty with honesty,
2) Reward spin with spin.

And if any marketeers read this, hahaha, spin on it.

(PS: I know, from colleagues and friends, that I am not alone in doing this.)