Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Mozilla Labs Experiment Distills Your History Into Interests

Posted by Unknown on from the enjoys-long-trolls-on-the-beach dept.

Barence writes "Mozilla is proposing that the Firefox browser collects data on users' interests to pass on to websites. The proposal is designed to allow websites to personalize content to visitors' tastes, without sites having to suck up a user's browsing history, as they do currently. 'Let's say Firefox recognizes within the browser client, without any browsing history leaving my computer, that I'm interested in gadgets, comedy films, hockey and cooking,' says Justin Scott, a product manager from Mozilla Labs. 'Those websites could then prioritize articles on the latest gadgets and make hockey scores more visible. And, as a user, I would have complete control over which of my interests are shared, and with which websites.'" This is the result of an extended experiment. The idea is that your history is used to generate a set of interests which you can then share voluntarily with websites, hopefully discouraging the blanket tracking advertising systems love to do now.

5 of 158 comments (clear)

  1. interesting take. by stewsters · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It makes sense if advertising companies were nice people, but please never turn this on by default. Most likely they will just add the info that you supply them to their trove of tracking data.

    1. Re:interesting take. by gstoddart · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This proposal is about making it easier for me to tell the advertizing companies what I want to see ads for.

      I don't wish to see ads, and I block at my router and browser as many other things as possible.

      You may think it's nice, but I believe this is a terrible idea -- it should be private by default and require action to make it send anything more.

      The last thing I want is Mozilla deciding they're just like Google and Facebook and that my browsing history is their resource to be monetized.

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
  2. I don't want to live in a bubble by jarle.aase · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And I definitely don't want my browser to spy on me. There are already too much of that going on.

  3. A revolutionary idea by pipatron · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I have a revolutiounary idea!

    How about giving users the ability to visit different "web sitez" or what you call them, depending on their interest?

    So for example, if I am interested in hockey, and live in Sweden, I could type in, say, "www.swehockey.se" in some sort of text input field in the browser.

    This way, you wouldn't actually have to send any information at all to some unknown third party!

    --
    c++; /* this makes c bigger but returns the old value */
  4. Kinda missin' the point, guys... by pla · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The idea is that your history is used to generate a set of interests which you can then share voluntarily with websites, hopefully discouraging blanket tracking advertising systems love to do now.

    You guys just really don't fucking get it, do you?

    I don't want to make it easier for you to target me with ads. I don't want to share personal information with you. I don't want to give you yet another way to track me ("Oh, look, Mr. 18-25YO woodworking rugby-watching green-tea-drinking VI-using lesbian-fetishist on FireFox-17-with-Flash-11.101 has come back to the site!"). I don't want to "build a relationship" with you. I don't want to get your newsletter. I don't have the least interest in the viability of your business model outside the ad revenue you won't get from me. I will answer any obligatory signup questions with completely bogus info, though the throwaway email address I give you will at least work - Once.

    I will find you through Google. I will visit the pages on your site that I searched for in the first place. If you have a site that appeals to me in general, I may casually browse around for a while (though if I visited with a specific goal, probably not). I will block ads, cookies, most scripts, and tracking bugs the whole time.

    Have a nice day.