Big Google is Watching

Here we go again. Google is going to (officially) start watching, recording, and selling your web browsing habits. "Interest-based advertising" is based on profiling your interactions with content on the web. No word as yet if you, as a user, have the right or an easy mechanism to globally opt out of their cyber surveillance.

The team at AdSense, Google's advertising arm, sent me the following "Hey, you need to update your privacy policy to tell people they have no privacy. Thanks." note...

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.

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

I find this move objectionable as both web developer and a web user.

In addition to being creepy, this kind of pervasive cross-domain tracking of a user is going to make life very difficult for honest, ethical web developers who use cookies responsibly. The inevitable and largely indiscriminate cookie-killing backlash that is sure to follow is going to make moving around the Web seem like work as users are confronted with warning after warning about benign cookie operations.

I believe an ethical implementation of a personalization engine like this must provide an easy way to opt out and allow people to view and adjust their profile.

Inferring user 'interests' is a dicey game. In 1998 the Internet consultancy I worked for acquired a Toronto based web firm that had developed a personalization system that inferred users' interest based on their browsing. The newly acquired staff held a seminar to educate the company on the capabilities of their software. The presenter talked about the benefits to the user, downplaying the privacy and ethical issues. Near the end of the talk the presenter pulled up his own profile to illustrate how well the system can know a user over time. While he stood facing 150 of his new colleagues the 30 foot screen behind him declared that "...you are interested in 'sex' and 'young children'."

Fortunately, they were listed as separate interests. The moral of my tale is that even if you turn your back on the privacy issues in a system like this, they are still there.