Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

MIT's Eyebrowse To Rank and Review Internet Sites, While Retaining Privacy (thestack.com)

Posted by timothy on from the click-here-and-here-and-here dept.

An anonymous reader writes: MIT has launched a new scheme whereby participating users can voluntarily share data on their website viewing habits, via the use of a Google Chrome extension and by signing up to an MIT website. The scheme, called Eyebrowse, began development in 2010 and has been in closed beta for the last 18 months. Cornell information science professor Mor Naaman says of the project: "Data has traditionally been used by anyone from corporations to the government...but the goal of this system is to make the data more useful for the individuals themselves, to give them more control, and to make it more useful to communities."

1 of 28 comments (clear)

  1. Retaining Privacy? by WoOS · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The "retaining privacy" part of the posting's title only refers to the ability to prevent some websites to be listed. Everything else is public. From the FAQ:

    • How much of my browsing data does Eyebrowse collect?

      Eyebrowse only collects data from the domains that you give it permission to collect. ...

    • Is the data I put on my Eyebrowse feed public?

      Yes. ....

    • Exactly what fields are collected with each visit?

      From every visit that is collected from Eyebrowse, we collect the time you entered the page and the time you leave the page. From the webpage, we store the url, [....] . Finally, the visit is associated with your Eyebrowse account. ...

    They specifically warn that even an anonymous eyebrowse account can be potentially tracked back to a user by his browsing behaviour. It appears the title of the posting promises more than the mechanism keeps. No wonder for a webservice promising to get you in touch with like-minded (or -browsing) people.