> This is the exact attitude I'm trying to get past. Its not about
> bandwidth or advertising. Its about personal and organizational
> information and the potential abuses of that information when its in the
> hands of a corporate entity in our "capitalist society". Please don't
> look at what DoubleClick is spoon feeding you, look at what they are
> doing and draw your own conclusions.
I do look at what they are doing, and I do look at their conclusions.
Fingerpointing at doubleclick i feel is, however, missing the point of a
larger scale education : if you transmit information to a site on the
internet then you should be aware of the consequences before you do it.
The amount of people who will submit personal details to the dodgiest
back street looking web sites is amazing [hey, porn is one of the
biggest web industries still, isn't it?] : that's about educating the
users in 'how the internet works' : not about saying doubleclick are
commiting crimes against privacy and that maybe a body should be set up
to block them out dynamically as they change guise, as spammers do.
> > I've had a lot of problems with people posting incredibly rude and
> > malicious messages onto forums software we host, primarily through
> > things like anonimizer, cgicache, and privada :
>
> Then don't accept them.
We don't.... but new ones pup up all the time and that's part of the
fund of keeping track of it all, isn't it :)
> As someone who works in security I certainly
> don't feel we should all be anonymous. These are your resources to
> manage as you see fit and you should be free to accept/deny/log what
> ever you want. The latest series of attacks certainly shows that too
> much anonymity can be a bad thing. This does not mean that having
> someone else logging what you are doing without you knowledge is
> necessarily a good or even useful thing.
And whose to say Altavista/[enter name of company as applicable] aren't
logging your searches and user information for their use down the line
as well as passing it through to doubleclick anyway? What's the problem
with one company accepting it and another not. How about the rediculous
patent that Amazon are trying to apply for on this concept of linking a
user's visit to a site to historic information? How about the fact that
most shops analyze product sales to target their customers [on and off
line]? If you have any form of reward/loyalty card with a supermarket or
chain the information you use to collect your points is also used to
asses your spending habits ... did you read the small print on your
loyalty card application? Did you read the small print on your search engine?
from http://doc.altavista.com/legal/privacy.shtml
[hidden under registration, but actually it implies that this is the
instance no matter what, though I'm no lawyer]
<quote>
There are also instances where we may share your personal information with
carefully selected companies we have relationships with. We will share this
information with these companies only if you have chosen not to opt out of
receiving advertising materials from them. In the event that you
previously chose
not to opt out, but wish to remove yourself from these mailing lists,
you may send
email directly to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and we will have your personal
information removed from that company's user database. In addition,
should we
add new features that require the sharing of your personal information
with an
additional advertiser or sponsor, and you do not wish to have us do so,
you may
also use the above email address to request that we not share your
information.
</quote>
To me, this implies that they tell you that they are going to send that
information to 'selected partners' if you choose to recieve adverts
from them. Because there isn't a checkbox to make that you don't get
doubleclick banners, just means this is implicit as part of the service
they provide. This is an extension of that, it's existed for two to
three decades. It's what computers were discovered to be very useful for
a long time ago [statitical analysis] and the web is another source of
that info.
I'm not saying it's good, I'm just saying its useful, I'm just saying
that it's happening all around you and I feel you've picked quite a bad
example, and it's ironic that someone should post a url for a site
providing anonymity on the web!!! maybe I'm being a little too devils
advocate I suppose. Or maybe I've too much meta knowledge [sans
paranoia] of what's going on and assuming you know more about this that
I read into your email... I've read most of http://www.privacy.org/ and
various other sites and while I've got that 'being looked over my
shoulder' feeling, I've also got an expected lifespan of 75-80 years and
I'm well into that and have many other worries about a system which will
still be screwing people over in years to come ... [once doubleclick
have long gone]... but as I said, that's philosophy.
I can see your issues in what this information is being used for, and
how that information can be associated with a computer without it
reflecting on the person using that computer, and that can be a bad
thing, and the comment about 'if the government were doing this everyone
would be spooked'... hell, the government have been doing for years :
it's called the Inland Revenue where I come from : just analysis of
differnet information, and tying that back to what you have going on :
but maybe Britain's a bit worse for that :)
Peace, and please carry on. Sorry to have interjected.
d.
--
Dorian Moore is property of Kleber Design Ltd. If found please contact Kleber
by phone on +44 207 581 1362 or visit http://www.kleber.net for further details.
You really shouldn't listen to anything he says... as it may just be an opinion
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