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Apple Patents Polluting Facebook, Google Profiles

Posted by timothy on from the why-all-your-friends-have-crazy-aliases dept.

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.'"

4 of 142 comments (clear)

  1. So Apple by MitchDev · · Score: 5, Funny

    has a patent for lying and fooling people?

    1. Re:So Apple by imagined.by · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

      Interesting how even this can be spun to something negative.

  2. Makes Sense Now by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    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...

  3. Prior Art. by EasyTarget · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.)

    --
    "Oops, I always forget the purpose of competition is to divide people into winners and losers." - Hobbes