Big Brother Google Is Watching Me
As a Google Adsense user, I recently received this e-mail from Google:
Hi,We’re writing to let you know about the upcoming launch of
interest-based advertising, which will require you to review and make
any necessary changes to your site’s privacy policies. You’ll also see
some new options on your Account Settings page.Interest-based advertising will allow advertisers to show ads based on
a user’s previous interactions with them, such as visits to advertiser
website and also to reach users based on their interests (e.g. “sports
enthusiast”). To develop interest categories, we will recognize the
types of web pages users visit throughout the Google content network.
As an example, if they visit a number of sports pages, we will add
them to the “sports enthusiast” interest category. To learn more about
your associated account settings, please visit the AdSense Help Center
at http://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/topic.py?topic= 20310. As a result of this announcement, your privacy policy will now need to
reflect the use of interest-based advertising. Please review the
information at https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py? answer=100557
to ensure that your site’s privacy policies are up-to-date, and make
any necessary changes by April 8, 2009. Because publisher sites and
laws vary across countries, we’re unfortunately unable to suggest
specific privacy policy language.For more information about interest-based advertising, you can also visit the Inside AdSense Blog at http://adsense.blogspot.com/
2009/03/driving-monetization- with-ads-that.html. We appreciate your participation and look forward to this upcoming enhancement.
Sincerely,
The Google AdSense Team
Email preferences: You have received this mandatory email service
announcement to update you about important changes to your AdSense
product or account.Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043
A couple of things jumped out at me:
- “…publisher sites and
laws vary across countries…”
Whenever someone starts talking about laws, I get nervous. This generally means that if they are not out and out breaking some law, they are stepping into an area that is at best morally ambiguous. - “To develop interest categories, we will recognize the
types of web pages users visit throughout the Google content network.”
There are a couple of other terms that come to mind. Spying. Profiling. Invasion of privacy. So, essentially, Google is going to start tracking what sites I go to, regardless whether or not I give them permission to or not, and then slap a label on my forehead all for the benefit of their advertisers. Meanwhile, police cannot search a car in the city I am in, even though they know there is a knife in the car, because it violates the rights of the criminal! And, by the way, what is this content network? Google only owned sites (e.g. Blogger) or any sight that has Google ads on it (the majority of the websites out there).
Here are some more interesting quotes from Google about these issues:
As users browse websites in the
AdSense network, including YouTube, Google stores an advertising cookie
in a user’s browser to understand the types of pages that user is
visiting. This information is used to show ads based on interest
categories that might appeal to your users. For example, if a user
browses many sports-related websites displaying AdSense ads or watches
sports-related videos on YouTube, Google may associate a sports
interest category with their cookie and show the user more
sports-related ads. Users can also edit their list of interest
categories within the Ads Preferences Manager.The user information we gather from AdSense sites is used in accordance with Google’s privacy policy.
It is not used to identify users personally and we don’t show ads based
on personal information. We also will not show ads based on sensitive
information or interest categories, such as those based on race,
religion, sexual orientation, health, or sensitive financial
categories, without a user’s opt-in consent.
Other links:
- What is interest-based advertising and how will it benefit me?
- What changes will I need to make to prepare for the launch of interest-based advertising?
- How does Google determine user interest categories?
- Can I opt out of interest-based advertising for my site?
- I’ve opted out of ads based on user interest categories. Do I still need to change my privacy policy?
- How is interest-based advertising different from placement-targeted advertising?
- How are you protecting the privacy of my site’s users?
- Will ads from sites I’ve filtered appear to users through interest-based advertising?
I’ve got to admit, this really gives me the creeps!
How do you feel about this? Let me know in the comments.
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6 Responses to “Big Brother Google Is Watching Me”
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Anon Says:
March 13th, 2009 at 2:51 amAs a fellow Google Adsense user I’m conflicted. This most recent move seems to fly in the face of G’s “Don’t be evil” motto. Personally, I’m still reeling but others seem ready to ditch adsense on their sites and others still are thinking of technological means to such as adblockers, anonymity, cookie blockers and clickthru alteration.
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Kevin Winters Says:
March 13th, 2009 at 7:10 amThanks for the info, just wondering if we could identify the particular cookie, I would love to be able to delete it on a regular basis.
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Angus S-F Says:
March 13th, 2009 at 8:06 amIf you’re truly worried, use a proxy server or Tor. If you use Firefox, you can improve your anonymity from Google with a combination of Adblock Plus (blocks ads), NoScript (use it to mark advertising servers as “untrusted” so they can’t run scripts), and CustomzieGoogle, which allows you to anonymize any Google tracking and blocks communication with Google Analytics.
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Mystech Says:
March 13th, 2009 at 4:55 pmSimply deleting your cookies or relying on IP obfuscation will not prevent the new technology from building a profile. However, it looks like the EFF and Google have come to some sort of solution in the form of an Opt-Out Plugin:
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/03/google-begins-behavioral-targeting-ad-program
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47 Says:
March 26th, 2009 at 1:17 amTo answer your question about what is the content network, it’s the network of websites running AdSense (your second thought). Here’s a link from the AdWords site if you’re interested:
http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=90958
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Hivemind Says:
May 31st, 2009 at 12:16 pmWell here’s an easy way to avoid it: Stop using Google.
I’m not being funny, but Google are not a charity (although you would be forgiven for thinking they are for the amount of stuff they give away free) so what do you expect them to do? How else can they make money?
It seems everyone wants everything for nothing, especially when it comes to big companies like Google. People complain that they are ’spying’, yet they seem to completely forget that almost every day they use an incredibly complex and expensive search system for free. You have to ‘pay’ for this somehow, and targeted ads are that way. (This sort of “I am ENTITLED to this piece of software/music/service FOR FREE” is the driving force behind music piracy.)
