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

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."

Comments

Biased results

[Flavianoep]

As the scheme will only work with Google Chrome (and perhaps, Chromium), the results will only represent habits of user of such browser.

Re:Biased results

[alvinrod]

Yes, but do you really want to know what Internet Explorer users are looking at on the web?

Feature, not a bug.

Re:Biased results

[KGIII]

Opera, Vivaldi, and (I think) most browsers based on Chromium use the same extensions so it may work with other browsers but probably isn't directly supported. I don't imagine there will be much problem using it with any of them unless it has Chrome-specific hooks that I'm unaware of. For example, I've yet to find any extension for Chrome that did not also work with Opera.

I used to need an extension to import them easily but I could always unpack them, enter developer mode, and add them that way. The Opera extension allows me to just click on them and install them like normal (but needing to still manually enable them). I'm pretty sure that they've now changed this so that they just work without needing the extra extension but I have to be honest and say that I've not actually checked that out as there aren't any Chrome-only extensions that I use.

Laugh

[koan]

"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."

That may or may not be his intention, but once out ti will be used for... "whatever".

Help us build it!

[Karger]

Eyebrowse is open source---at https://github.com/haystack/ey... --- and that we'd love your help making it better.

I'll also correct a few inaccuracies in the title of the post
* it won't let you rank or review sites (yet)
* Rather than unyieldingly "privacy preserving" our idea is to let *you* decide what parts of your web activity you want to share. Many people would like to have a more social experience on the web, for the same reason that people like to go outside, run into friends, and see where crowds are gathering. But we argue that you, rather than the tracking agencies, should be in charge of deciding which parts of your activity should be visible.

Re:Help us build it!

[lolococo]

Indeed, this is the Slashdot realm, my friend. Forget about going out, is that even a word?

- our only travels: from the basement to the fridge and back
- our only desire: more of that nerdy crap
- our only girlfriends: a set of nicely shaped pixels

This is who we are!

Retaining Privacy?

[WoOS]

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.

Re:MIT

[KGIII]

Now that has to get annoying after a while. I donated a sizable amount when I sold and they've been begging ever since. I get much, much more email from them than I did prior - though I don't think I signed up for anything new and the volume of snail mail is much greater. I do get the newsletter, and I did before, but now I get more than just the newsletter. I can unsubscribe to that but I'm not sure if that will take care of the rest - those don't have an "unsubscribe" link at the bottom.

I think that means that you should probably never, ever, donate - unless you want the volume to increase. If it's every other day, it'll probably be every day if you donate. Sadly, I'm not kidding.

As an aside, I didn't know you'd earned your Ph.D. When people introduce me as Doctor, I end up getting asked medical questions - way too often for it to be unique. A few times have been frustrating enough that I've given them "medical advice." Back when I was still gainfully employed, I'd considered giving them my work number and telling them to schedule an appointment. As you are still working, you might want to get creative and take advantage of that. Your spouse is bound to have some stupid friends and dinner parties - I highly recommend such a time and place for experimenting with that. "Oh gosh! I have to tell you, that looks deadly!" How much disruption you cause with this is up to you and how willing you are to irritate your spouse but I'm sure there's some wiggle room in there.