Privacy vs targeting: what will win?
Now, when user data uses almost every second web application, it's time to think about their security. A decent Russian translation of the English word privacy probably does not exist, but this is exactly what more and more users are paying attention to. Indeed, for services such as Facebook , Flickr , del.icio.us , YouTube (listing all the examples can be very long), one of the strategic goals is to get the most detailed personal information from each user.
Gender, age, marital status, interests and other “actively” added data are only the tip of the iceberg. If we talk about the data that the user of the web service provides to the system proactively, then we will get a huge array of information, a kind of “hidden” user profile, about which he himself may have no idea. It is technically not so difficult to record and compare all the data and metadata with which the user interacts: the content he creates and consumes, the communities he enters, finally his “friends” who do the same. For marketers, this is called “behavioral targeting” and is monetized by an increase in the cost of advertising on the service, because it does not appeal to everyone at once, but to the most specific group of users who are most likely interested in the advertised product. Dave Winer , one of the ideologues of RSS, said a landmark phrase: “Advertising will become more and more targeted until it disappears completely. Because ideally targeted advertising is just information. And this is good!".
On the other hand, not every user feels comfortable knowing that someone knows about him as much (if not more) than he does. The agreement on the use of almost every social web service indicates that all data generated by the user remains in the possession of the Service Administration, even after “deleting” the account. In this regard, there are many other services that limit the dissemination of personal information of the user.
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My Data Is MY Data is a browser plugin that notifies a user when the Facebook Beacon system connects to a partner site. Thus, users can define, hide or not hide information about each of their online purchases or other shopping activities separately. Recall that Facebook Beacon is a notorious service that received a generally negative attitude of the press and many users due to the fact that information about the actions of Facebook users on the partner websites of the Beacon program was distributed uncontrollably among the user's friends. Despite the presence of advanced privacy settings Facebook, allowing you to control almost all the information shared with friends, the MyDataIsMyData service has every chance to become popular because of the popular scandal with Beacon.
There is also a limit of 5,000 friends on Facebook, exceeding which, as an exception, is allowed except for US presidential candidates. The new social network service Ncludr differs from Facebook by the absence of such restrictions, as well as advanced privacy options. We can say that this is a service for extroverts - extremes. By connecting to it, the user becomes a friend for everything and everyone (in the amount of exactly 12.3 billion), and receives almost no opportunity to limit this orgy. Of course, this site is a joke, but such a joke is quite capable of attracting considerable constant traffic!
Serious organizations working in the field of personalization of the web experience (for example, Data Portability Workgroup or APML Workgroup ), spend a significant amount of their energy on solving privacy problems. When the entire network is open and user data moves freely from one platform to another (and this is exactly what DP is striving for), the question always arises - is this particular trustworthy service worthy, will it not use this valuable data to the detriment of its owner? ? On the other hand, APML ( Attention Profiling Markup Language ), a language for describing the “tastes” of an Internet user, can itself be perceived by many as a blow to privacy. Perhaps it is the distrustful attitude of current users to the Internet that slows down innovation in the field of personalization of web experience. It is possible that a quantitative leap in adapting new information exchange formats in the global network will not happen soon when the Internet is populated by a new generation of users who perceive privacy in a completely different way than our contemporaries.
Article written for LiveIdea
Gender, age, marital status, interests and other “actively” added data are only the tip of the iceberg. If we talk about the data that the user of the web service provides to the system proactively, then we will get a huge array of information, a kind of “hidden” user profile, about which he himself may have no idea. It is technically not so difficult to record and compare all the data and metadata with which the user interacts: the content he creates and consumes, the communities he enters, finally his “friends” who do the same. For marketers, this is called “behavioral targeting” and is monetized by an increase in the cost of advertising on the service, because it does not appeal to everyone at once, but to the most specific group of users who are most likely interested in the advertised product. Dave Winer , one of the ideologues of RSS, said a landmark phrase: “Advertising will become more and more targeted until it disappears completely. Because ideally targeted advertising is just information. And this is good!".
On the other hand, not every user feels comfortable knowing that someone knows about him as much (if not more) than he does. The agreement on the use of almost every social web service indicates that all data generated by the user remains in the possession of the Service Administration, even after “deleting” the account. In this regard, there are many other services that limit the dissemination of personal information of the user.
')
My Data Is MY Data is a browser plugin that notifies a user when the Facebook Beacon system connects to a partner site. Thus, users can define, hide or not hide information about each of their online purchases or other shopping activities separately. Recall that Facebook Beacon is a notorious service that received a generally negative attitude of the press and many users due to the fact that information about the actions of Facebook users on the partner websites of the Beacon program was distributed uncontrollably among the user's friends. Despite the presence of advanced privacy settings Facebook, allowing you to control almost all the information shared with friends, the MyDataIsMyData service has every chance to become popular because of the popular scandal with Beacon.
There is also a limit of 5,000 friends on Facebook, exceeding which, as an exception, is allowed except for US presidential candidates. The new social network service Ncludr differs from Facebook by the absence of such restrictions, as well as advanced privacy options. We can say that this is a service for extroverts - extremes. By connecting to it, the user becomes a friend for everything and everyone (in the amount of exactly 12.3 billion), and receives almost no opportunity to limit this orgy. Of course, this site is a joke, but such a joke is quite capable of attracting considerable constant traffic!
Serious organizations working in the field of personalization of the web experience (for example, Data Portability Workgroup or APML Workgroup ), spend a significant amount of their energy on solving privacy problems. When the entire network is open and user data moves freely from one platform to another (and this is exactly what DP is striving for), the question always arises - is this particular trustworthy service worthy, will it not use this valuable data to the detriment of its owner? ? On the other hand, APML ( Attention Profiling Markup Language ), a language for describing the “tastes” of an Internet user, can itself be perceived by many as a blow to privacy. Perhaps it is the distrustful attitude of current users to the Internet that slows down innovation in the field of personalization of web experience. It is possible that a quantitative leap in adapting new information exchange formats in the global network will not happen soon when the Internet is populated by a new generation of users who perceive privacy in a completely different way than our contemporaries.
Article written for LiveIdea
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/23473/
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