ms mac consulting

Ghostery is a program that is brilliant.  I just came across it and new web spy terminology from this article on Macworld

Evidon/The Better Advertising Project, Inc. Ghostery 1.0.0 for Safari

Dan Frakes has given me a new piece of information about how the internet and advertisers are tracking our use of it.

For example, pretty much any blog or news site you visit (yes, including Macworld.com) uses scripts and tiny (or invisible) images—often called bugs—to track your online behavior and, usually, provide that information to ad networks and other Web-usage trackers. Whereas prior to iOS 4.3.3, someone with access to your iPhone’s backup could get a general idea of where you’ve been, chances are numerous companies have detailed profiles that include the kinds of sites you visit, which topics you find interesting, and possibly even specific items you’ve purchased.

and he gave us the program I linked to above – Ghostry – for dealing with the issue.  I’ve downloaded it and have yet to play with it but love the idea of keeping my personal browsing history out of the hands of all the websites I go on.  Why? Because I feel it starts to restrain my web experience as well as inundate me with spam.

I personally just piped up about cleaning my house on Facebook and the next thing I know I’m getting new spam, passed by filters and advertising housekeeping serivces too me. What?  I simply made a random complaint in a status update, it must be coincidence, right? Maybe not.

On top of the extra targeted spam I’ve also seen Facebook do more direct linking, so if you use the word water in a comment or status quote your sidebar Automatically brings up ads and pages that “relate.” This may soon be the experience on most of the targeting websites you visit. Not on your normal blog but what if New York Times only shows you the top stories that relate to their information on your browsing habits? Could you miss a tornado in the southlands cause all you really like to look at are vegetarian recipes and monster truck rallies?

The problem I have, besides feeling manipulated, is that i can see the future of this becoming very limiting.  I’m a person with a wide-ranging curiosity, even though over all I probably hit the same 4 sites all day long.  Due to being a human being, and human beings are creatures of habit, I will happily click feminist sites, computer sites and sci-fi sites, one after another, if served to me but what about the stuff I don’t even know I’ll find interesting?  Or want to buy? or want to laugh at? or…  How is it bettering my life to enable me to stay in a niche of purchasing, information and spam whacking? It’s not, it’s bettering someone else’s pocket.

So I will start with Ghostery and start paying more attention to this Evidon, apparently an organization posistioning itself to help self-police the web. If we all do it the government doesn’t have too. Socially Responsible Capitalism is an idea I support and there’s never been a group of people more into anarchist honesty than computer geeks so it just may work. From Evidon’s About page:

Selected by the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA) to power its Self-Regulatory Program for Online Behavioral Advertising, Evidon (formerly Better Advertising) enables a more trusted environment for everyone in the online ecosystem. It gives businesses an easy, standard way of providing evidence of compliance with industry guidelines, and consumers more transparency into, and control over how their information is used online.

By empowering consumers and earning their trust, businesses build their brands, participate in online behavioral advertising with confidence and generate better advertising results.

Evidon is the first Approved Provider of compliance services for the Self-Regulatory Program and has been in market at scale since July 2010, empowering consumers with a robust notice experience on billions of monthly impressions. Evidon created the Open Data Partnership (ODP), which allows consumers to manage their online profiles, and it operates the popular Ghostery browser extension, giving people even more control over their online experiences.

Separately, Evidon supplies the monitoring platform for the Council of Better Business Bureaus (CBBB) and the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) to enforce the Self-Regulatory Program (known as the Accountability Mechanisms). The monitoring platform uses data primarily from Ghostery’s opt-in panel, an automated lab and Evidon’s privacy database of over 500 companies involved in OBA.

Cross-fingers, maybe we can make a better world! Or at least keep the ad world of the web from swallowing our choices whole, little bug by little bug.

The Real Life Social Network — Facebook Has a Lot to Learn « The Scholarly Kitchen.

Interesting presentation, not only about the future of the world wide web but in the basics of how your social profiles are combining all the different aspects of your social life.