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Comments on news posted 2008-03-17 08:55:15: Tim Berners-Lee, one of the creators of the world wide web, says he doesn't much care for the new behavioral advertising services emerging that track online user activity in order to provide more specific ads. ..


Smith6612
Premium,MVM
join:2008-02-01
North Tonawanda, NY
kudos:21

Couldn't agree....

any more with his quote. If I want my web data tracked, I want be asked up about it first hand before it is implemented. But it's a good thing to see that the creator of the Internet is against all of this.

33591094

join:2002-11-19
Canada

Re: Couldn't agree....

said by Smith6612:

any more with his quote. If I want my web data tracked, I want be asked up about it first hand before it is implemented. But it's a good thing to see that the creator of the Internet is against all of this.
Creator of the World Wide Web, not the Internet.

alightfoot
Premium
join:2003-07-28
Hilliard, OH

Re: Couldn't agree....

said by 33591094:

said by Smith6612:

any more with his quote. If I want my web data tracked, I want be asked up about it first hand before it is implemented. But it's a good thing to see that the creator of the Internet is against all of this.
Creator of the World Wide Web, not the Internet.
Wouldn't want to steal Al Gore's thunder....

Smith6612
Premium,MVM
join:2008-02-01
North Tonawanda, NY
kudos:21
Isn't the World Wide Web the Internet technically though?

33591094

join:2002-11-19
Canada

Re: Couldn't agree....

No. The Internet existed long before the WWW, so they technically cannot be the same.

jjoshua
Premium
join:2001-06-01
Scotch Plains, NJ
kudos:1

HTTPS

Web can use https by default. Performance may be slower but that's a tradeoff that some sites may be willing to take.

That would solve the problem.

fAcEtIOUs
Premium
join:2002-03-03
kudos:4

Re: HTTPS

said by jjoshua:

Web can use https by default. Performance may be slower but that's a tradeoff that some sites may be willing to take.

That would solve the problem.
Would it? They would still have the URL you went to whether it was HTTP or HTTPS. So if you went to HTTPS://IhaveCancer.org they would still have that info to sell.
--
My BLOG .. .. Internet News .. .. My Web Page
russotto

join:2000-10-05
West Orange, NJ

Re: HTTPS

But they would not get »medicalstuff.org/ihavecancer -- just medicalstuff.org

Still, encryption is a very heavyweight solution for a problem that is easier fixed by NOT HAVING THE ISP TRACK MY PACKETS.

factchecker

@charter.com
said by fAcEtIOUs:

Would it? They would still have the URL you went to whether it was HTTP or HTTPS. So if you went to HTTPS://IhaveCancer.org they would still have that info to sell.
They would see the URL, but that is it.

HTTPS would definitely go a long way toward foiling Phorm. Phorm uses an algorithm that scans webpages as they are loaded and finds "key words" and uses them to customize the ads for the user. The Register had a good summary of how Phorm works a few days ago...

said by »www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/07···rtegrul/ :

Explain for our readers how Phorm's profiling system works.

Marc Burgess: What the profiler does is it first cleans the data. It's looking at two sets of information: the information in the request that's sent to the website and then information in the page that comes back.

From the request it pulls out the URL, and if that URL is a well known search engine such as Google or Yahoo! it'll also look for the search terms that are in the request.

And then from the information returned by the website, the profiler looks at the content. The first thing it does is it ignores several classes of information that could potentially be sensitive. So there's no form fields, no numbers, no email addresses (that is something containing an "@") and anything containing a title like Mr or Mrs.

jap
Premium
join:2003-08-10
038xx

Re: HTTPS

said by factchecker :

Phorm uses an algorithm that scans webpages as they are loaded and finds "key words" and uses them to customize the ads for the user. The Register had a good summary of how Phorm works a few days ago...

»www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/07···rtegrul/
Cripes. I never thought of backtracking to scan referring url. Bastards. No way for a client to detect presence of such a server tool either. Maybe some kind Mozilla user - who doesn't work for a data mining company - has created a redirect plugin. Time to locate some form of local referrer washer.

Thanks for the Register link. Evil for server owners to install such a tool.

[reminisces the pre-commercial web days]

gaforces
United We Stand, Divided We Fall

join:2002-04-07
Santa Cruz, CA

1 edit
A better solution is to make the data mining backfire on them by inserting a worm into their database that sends info back Or it could do worse things ...

Payback is a mofo. Parse THIS, sucka.

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