Jesse Brown: Who's afraid of "behaviour tracking"?
Wednesday, March 11, 2009 | 02:01 PM ET
By Jesse Brown, CBC technology columnist:
Google has announced some new features for its AdSense network, and a predictable flood of horrified headlines have followed.
So what are we supposed to be afraid of?
Well, from now on, “interest-based” ads will serve you advertising based on the kind of sites you’ve visited before. Furthermore, “previous interaction” ads will be based on what you’ve done on those sites; to borrow Wired’s example, if you put a camera in your shopping cart but never actually purchased it, expect to see a lot of camera ads in the future.
Am I alone in not worrying about this? “Behaviour tracking” does sound scary, but let’s consider a couple of facts:
1. Google isn’t storing or sharing any behavioural information about us. Our histories are saved to cookies that live on our own computers, and even so, names and addresses aren’t included.
2. If it still really bothers you, you can opt out.
So who cares?
Actually, I do: I like these features.
Online ads need to get a lot better if the current economic model of the web is to survive. We expect wonderful online tools and content for free, which means this stuff must be supported by ads. Typically, by lousy ads- irrelevant, annoying, and ignorable ads.
If I have to live with advertising, I’d prefer it be relevant advertising. Knee-jerk privacy scares say more
about techphobia than about big-brother intrusions, and they cloud our thinking about true privacy worries.
For example: Google’s bug last weekend that allowed unauthorized users access to people’s Google Doc files. Though damage control was swift, this was a major foul-up. Cloud computing is a public trust, and this can’t happen again.
Let’s save our outrage for incidents like this.
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Comments
Larry
Toronto
I work in online advertising. Google is not the first to implement BT technology. It's been around on MSN, Yahoo, AOL and a few online networks for at least a year. Maybe you didn't notice. Get over it. It's a good thing for you, and a good thing for the industry.
One of the big worries in the industry right now is cookie deletion. There is a serious misconception of what a cookie is, making people think it is intrusive, or can undermine their online security and privacy. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
NO PERSONAL INFORMATION IS COLLECTED OR STORED IN A COOKIE.
We in the industry use cookies to implement Behavioral Targeting, to serve you more relevant ads. We use them for frequency capping, so you don't keep seeing the same ads over and over again. We use them for Return on Investment tracking, so we can better spend our advertising budgets, wasting less money, and keeping consumer prices competitive.
Cookies are an essential technology to the online advertising industry, and to the author's point, help support all that free content you take for granted. Please don't delete them!
Posted March 12, 2009 09:52 AM
Gordon Fecyk
Winnipeg
I've seen ignorant people in powerful non-IT positions scared of cookies, using them as an excuse to implement even more ignorant security measures, even using that as an excuse to stonewall more important security changes.
There are far more important things to worry about than 1 KB text files stored on a computer.
Posted March 13, 2009 10:15 AM
David Clearwater
I would tend to agree with the article and the two previous posts but at the same time I think there is an important point in all this. The "don't worry, be happy" attitude can be dangerous and I am for informing and educating online users about ALL these issues. I am a little horrified at times how the tech industry often seems to think that my computer, my browser, and my browsing history belong to them. I see the argument about free-but-ad-supported content and people should be aware of that. But, most of the time, I find the behaviour targeting to still be very crude and, often, it seems marketers try to fit individuals into their own pre-existing categories. It often cannot really take into account the complexities of actual behaviour and individual interests that exist and which exist beyond the confines of consumer activity (not everything I look at online is related to consumerism or is a reflection of purchasing interest). And, really, do you expect individuals to take what any corporation says these days as honest truth? Sure, you're *not* going to collect my personal data and sell it to Axiom Corp. or give it to the Dept. of Homeland Security? Yeah right. These days I am more inclined to pay for content and stay completely away from proprietary technology. I have a brand new Ubuntu-running laptop running open source (and non-data-collecting) software... I donate to the organizations who make the software and seek out the ads/information/products that I want to see, when I want to see it. I am very happy and still spend lots of money to support the economy.
Posted March 19, 2009 02:59 PM
Colin Longman
Toronto
Larry, a web programmer can store whatever they want in a cookie.
There is a lot of information exchanged between the web server and user all of which a web programmer has access to. If the user has authenticated to backend systems then the programmer has access to this information and can store it in a cookie, on the user's computer. Agreed, they shouldn't but there is nothing stopping this from happening.
It wouldn't take much to read this back when the user visits some other supposedly "trusted" website.
The "Trust us, we know what we're doing" approach to security and privacy simply doesn't work.
Posted March 25, 2009 10:34 PM