December 10, 2008
About New York
What the Search Engines Have Found Out About All of Us By JIM DWYER
Google has released its map of the national brain and appetites for 2008, and it turns out that many, many people across America have been asking the Internet "what is love?" and "how to kiss."
And to tighten the focus, Google has also provided a list of search queries made by people sitting at computers in New York City.
It turns out that New Yorkers are looking for something a bit different. On a list of the 10 subjects that posted the greatest increases this year, the country as a whole was looking for Fox News and information about David Cook, the "American Idol" champion.
Neither made the New York list. Then again, the national list did not have 2 of the city's top 10: Walter Gropius, the founder of the Bauhaus architecture school, and the Large Hadron Collider, a 17-mile circular underground tunnel in Switzerland that was built to smash protons into each other at 99.999999 percent of the speed of light.
No doubt someone out in cyberspace can explain the surge of interest this year in Gropius, who has been dead since 1969 and has only one structure of any note in the city, the former Pan Am building.
The collider is easier to understand. There were worries that the crash of protons would instantly create a black hole, but in good news that was widely overlooked at the time, no hole appeared — or is it disappeared? — on Sept. 10, the day the machine was turned on. Search-engine interest in the collider promptly dropped off, as people pointed their anxieties and inquiries toward "Wall Street." (The collider is currently on the fritz, as is Wall Street.)
On the surface, these kinds of lists are supposed to reveal what Google calls the zeitgeist of 2008, though it's not much of a surprise that people were interested in Sarah Palin and Barack Obama. But they also provide hints of the level of personal details that people are now turning over to search engines and related businesses without much awareness.
The lists, said Lt. Col. Greg Conti, a professor of computer science at West Point, "are just major tsunami-type activities, big waves in the online searches."
Professor Conti, the author of "Googling Security: How Much Does Google Know About You?" (Addison-Wesley, 2008), contends that Google's internal tools make it possible to develop detailed pictures of individual interests, not just of masses of teenagers looking for the very latest about Miley Cyrus.
"A complete picture of us as individuals and as companies emerges — political leanings, medical conditions, business acquisitions signaled by job searches," he said. "It would be very scary if we could play back every search we made. Those can be tied back very precisely to an individual. You can go all the way from individual molecules of water up to the tsunami."
INFORMATION on the Web looks free, but it is actually swapped for little bits of data that are useful to businesses. Google records Internet protocol addresses that are generated by each computer, cookies permitted by the users, the kind of browser being used, and the operating system of the computer, said Heather Spain, a spokeswoman for Google.
After nine months, Ms. Spain said, Google starts to "anonymise" the data it has collected by deleting the last two digits from the I.P. address. At 18 months, Google removes parts of the cookie number.
"This breaks the link between the search query and the computer it was entered from," she said. "It's similar to the way in which credit card companies replace digits with hash marks on receipts to improve their customers' security."
Professor Conti said that few people have the slightest idea how much of a trail they leave across the Internet. "People tend to think they're only leaving footprints on sites that they trust," he said, but many Web sites contain invisible code, like Google Analytics, that can track users over swaths of the Web.
The lists of popular searches, Ms. Spain said, are the products of inquiries by millions of people and do not threaten anyone's privacy. The tools Google provides to the public for analyzing searches generally make it possible to look at the inquiries made in a particular state, not by individual cities.
For now, surrendering personal information is the cost for asking questions and getting answers quickly. All of the privacy measures are cumbersome.
"I speak about this at hacker conferences," Professor Conti said, "and if they say something's hard to use, believe me, it's hard. There's really no solution now — except abstinence. And if you choose not to use online tools, you're not a member of the 21st century."
E-mail: dwyer@nytimes.com
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: December 11, 2008
The About New York column on Wednesday, about the most popular search subjects on Google this year, misstated the speed of protons accelerated in the Large Hadron Collider, which made the top 10 list of searches in New York City. The protons travel at 99.999999 percent of the speed of light, not at the actual speed of light. And the column, quoting a Google spokeswoman, misstated the timing of a step that Google takes to disguise the identity of its users by deleting parts of their cookies from its logs. It does that after 18 months, not after nine.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/10/nyregion/10about.html?sq=Dwyer&st=cse&scp=3&pagewanted=print
http://snipurl.com/83jij
Showing posts with label Privacy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Privacy. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
How Should I.S.P.s Tell You if They Want to Track Your Surfing? By Saul Hansell
April 9, 2008, 3:41 pm
How Should I.S.P.s Tell You if They Want to Track Your Surfing? By Saul Hansell
The term “unavoidable notice” has been bandied about by a group of Internet advertising executives recently as they explored whether to endorse proposals for Internet service providers to keep track of where their customers surfed and what they searched for.
One theory goes that such systems would be acceptable if customers were informed of the plan in a way that they were sure to see, with a clear way for users to choose not to have their activities recorded. (There are some who say that it is simply unacceptable for an I.S.P. to record the content of its customers’ communications under any circumstances.)
One of the leading companies involved in this concept, Phorm, says it is developing a plan that would in fact force users to see an explanation of its program and give them an explicit choice about whether to participate. Since the company won’t start operations for a few weeks, the details, which are very important, haven’t been disclosed.
The other company, NebuAd, which started operation last fall, seems to be going out of its way to avoid being noticed by the users it monitors. It won’t disclose the Internet providers or advertising companies it is working with. And after The Washington Post discovered two Internet providers it works with — Embarq and Wide Open West — those companies have refused to answer any questions about their relationship with NebuAd.
It always struck me that one good test of an idea is whether the people behind it are willing to stand up in public and say exactly what they are doing and why. And that seems a particularly apt way to look at these companies, which claim that their seemingly invasive plans are in fact very sensitive to the privacy of Internet users.
Both NebuAd and Phorm understand this. Both have hired public relations consultants and reached out to privacy advocates. Indeed, as I’ve written, the chief executives of both Phorm and NebuAd reached out to me and spent a long time discussing their companies and how their systems worked.
It’s early, but so far Phorm appears to be more committed to openness than NebuAd. It may have more of a hurdle to overcome to build trust. The company, under its previous name 121 Media, distributed software that displayed pop-up ads on users’ computers. Privacy groups, like the Center for Democracy and Technology, said the company’s software was spyware because it wasn’t disclosed properly when it was installed and was hard to remove.
Now that it has changed its business, Phorm says it is pursuing an open approach. It has published the names of the I.S.P.s it is working with and some sites that will use its advertising system. It has hired Ernst & Young to audit its system. And it says it will allow others to examine the system as well.
Most significantly, Kent Ertugrul, Phorm’s chief executive, told me that it would not start monitoring users until after it pops a screen in front of their browsing to explain the system. He wouldn’t say what the screen would look like. And the choice to opt out of the system, he said, might be on a second screen, not right next to the choice to opt in. Still, he promised that “the opt-out will be more transparent than anything else,” referring to other ad targeting systems.
BT Broadband, one of the three British Internet providers that are working with Phorm, will in fact give users the choice to participate or not on the same screen, at least in its initial tests. Emma Sanderson, BT’s director of value-added services, sent me this in an e-mail message describing how the disclosure will work:
The concept though is pretty straightforward…. the webpage will appear when a customer starts browsing, there will be a description of the service and three buttons - Yes I want the service, No I don’t want the service and I want more information (not these words exactly). If they request more information they will be taken to another page with more detail on it.
She said the company would start testing the service with 10,000 customers in coming weeks. It will be presented as a way to both reduce the number of irrelevant ads users see and also as an aid to online safety because Phorm also helps detect some fraudulent Web sites.
Ari Schwartz, the chief operating officer of the Center for Democracy and Technology, said that this approach may well be appropriate, depending on how easy it is for consumers to understand and how actions are interpreted. If someone closes the pop-up window without making an explicit choice, he said, it should not be considered consent to have their actions monitored.
NebuAd’s approach to disclosure, by any measure, is much further away from “unavoidable notice.” Robert Dykes, NebuAd’s chief executive, told me the company would force I.S.P.’s that participate to notify their customers about the program. But this can be by e-mail, an insert in a billing statement or some other format where boilerplate that consumers don’t read is placed. Of course, it requires that the companies also disclose the system in their privacy statements, another graveyard for unread legalese.
The privacy statement of Embarq is particularly terse. It doesn’t mention NebuAd. It does have a link to opt out of the system which goes to a Web site called Faireagle.com, which is run by NebuAd. Wide Open West has a somewhat more articulate privacy statement. It gives a brief example of how the system may work. It names NebuAd and gives several links where consumers can get more information.
In what other way, if any, did these companies notify their customers? That is one of many questions I had for them that they refused even to consider answering. Peter Smith, the vice president of programming for Wide Open West, declined to comment and declined to say why he was declining to comment.
I then called David Burgstahler, a partner of Avista Capital, the private equity firm that owns Wide Open West. He wouldn’t talk to me either. Amanda Heravi, an Avista spokeswoman, said she would see if she could find someone to talk to me, but I haven’t heard back yet.
At Embarq, Debra Peterson, the company spokeswoman, e-mailed this statement, saying she would entertain no further questions:
Like other companies, we are evaluating behavioral marketing tools, but we have not decided whether to move forward with them. Our Privacy Policy anticipates and alerts customers to possible future use of these tools, and offers customers the opportunity to simply and quickly opt out. EMBARQ takes its customers’ privacy very seriously and we take every precaution to ensure information about our customers remains secure and anonymous.
Embarq by the way is the big local phone company unit spun off from Sprint that is publicly traded.
In my conversation with Mr. Dykes, I asked several times why he wouldn’t name the Internet providers he works with. He said, “It is inappropriate for a vendor to talk about its customers.”
I asked him why users should feel comfortable being involved with a system when the companies using it are afraid to stand up in public and discuss it. I also suggested that customers may want to know in advance whether Internet providers they may choose to do business with will sell information about their browsing to ad targeting firms. He said there is no need to disclose that in advance, particularly because NebuAd allows people to go to its site and request a cookie on their computers that will indicate they don’t want to participate in its tracking program on any Internet provider.
“If someone thinks this is really important, they should simply opt-out,” Mr. Dykes said.
It’s not clear to me that these are the policies that will build the trust level that Mr. Dykes says he needs in order to convince the large Internet providers to sign up for his service.
How Should I.S.P.s Tell You if They Want to Track Your Surfing? By Saul Hansell
The term “unavoidable notice” has been bandied about by a group of Internet advertising executives recently as they explored whether to endorse proposals for Internet service providers to keep track of where their customers surfed and what they searched for.
One theory goes that such systems would be acceptable if customers were informed of the plan in a way that they were sure to see, with a clear way for users to choose not to have their activities recorded. (There are some who say that it is simply unacceptable for an I.S.P. to record the content of its customers’ communications under any circumstances.)
One of the leading companies involved in this concept, Phorm, says it is developing a plan that would in fact force users to see an explanation of its program and give them an explicit choice about whether to participate. Since the company won’t start operations for a few weeks, the details, which are very important, haven’t been disclosed.
The other company, NebuAd, which started operation last fall, seems to be going out of its way to avoid being noticed by the users it monitors. It won’t disclose the Internet providers or advertising companies it is working with. And after The Washington Post discovered two Internet providers it works with — Embarq and Wide Open West — those companies have refused to answer any questions about their relationship with NebuAd.
It always struck me that one good test of an idea is whether the people behind it are willing to stand up in public and say exactly what they are doing and why. And that seems a particularly apt way to look at these companies, which claim that their seemingly invasive plans are in fact very sensitive to the privacy of Internet users.
Both NebuAd and Phorm understand this. Both have hired public relations consultants and reached out to privacy advocates. Indeed, as I’ve written, the chief executives of both Phorm and NebuAd reached out to me and spent a long time discussing their companies and how their systems worked.
It’s early, but so far Phorm appears to be more committed to openness than NebuAd. It may have more of a hurdle to overcome to build trust. The company, under its previous name 121 Media, distributed software that displayed pop-up ads on users’ computers. Privacy groups, like the Center for Democracy and Technology, said the company’s software was spyware because it wasn’t disclosed properly when it was installed and was hard to remove.
Now that it has changed its business, Phorm says it is pursuing an open approach. It has published the names of the I.S.P.s it is working with and some sites that will use its advertising system. It has hired Ernst & Young to audit its system. And it says it will allow others to examine the system as well.
Most significantly, Kent Ertugrul, Phorm’s chief executive, told me that it would not start monitoring users until after it pops a screen in front of their browsing to explain the system. He wouldn’t say what the screen would look like. And the choice to opt out of the system, he said, might be on a second screen, not right next to the choice to opt in. Still, he promised that “the opt-out will be more transparent than anything else,” referring to other ad targeting systems.
BT Broadband, one of the three British Internet providers that are working with Phorm, will in fact give users the choice to participate or not on the same screen, at least in its initial tests. Emma Sanderson, BT’s director of value-added services, sent me this in an e-mail message describing how the disclosure will work:
The concept though is pretty straightforward…. the webpage will appear when a customer starts browsing, there will be a description of the service and three buttons - Yes I want the service, No I don’t want the service and I want more information (not these words exactly). If they request more information they will be taken to another page with more detail on it.
She said the company would start testing the service with 10,000 customers in coming weeks. It will be presented as a way to both reduce the number of irrelevant ads users see and also as an aid to online safety because Phorm also helps detect some fraudulent Web sites.
Ari Schwartz, the chief operating officer of the Center for Democracy and Technology, said that this approach may well be appropriate, depending on how easy it is for consumers to understand and how actions are interpreted. If someone closes the pop-up window without making an explicit choice, he said, it should not be considered consent to have their actions monitored.
NebuAd’s approach to disclosure, by any measure, is much further away from “unavoidable notice.” Robert Dykes, NebuAd’s chief executive, told me the company would force I.S.P.’s that participate to notify their customers about the program. But this can be by e-mail, an insert in a billing statement or some other format where boilerplate that consumers don’t read is placed. Of course, it requires that the companies also disclose the system in their privacy statements, another graveyard for unread legalese.
The privacy statement of Embarq is particularly terse. It doesn’t mention NebuAd. It does have a link to opt out of the system which goes to a Web site called Faireagle.com, which is run by NebuAd. Wide Open West has a somewhat more articulate privacy statement. It gives a brief example of how the system may work. It names NebuAd and gives several links where consumers can get more information.
In what other way, if any, did these companies notify their customers? That is one of many questions I had for them that they refused even to consider answering. Peter Smith, the vice president of programming for Wide Open West, declined to comment and declined to say why he was declining to comment.
I then called David Burgstahler, a partner of Avista Capital, the private equity firm that owns Wide Open West. He wouldn’t talk to me either. Amanda Heravi, an Avista spokeswoman, said she would see if she could find someone to talk to me, but I haven’t heard back yet.
At Embarq, Debra Peterson, the company spokeswoman, e-mailed this statement, saying she would entertain no further questions:
Like other companies, we are evaluating behavioral marketing tools, but we have not decided whether to move forward with them. Our Privacy Policy anticipates and alerts customers to possible future use of these tools, and offers customers the opportunity to simply and quickly opt out. EMBARQ takes its customers’ privacy very seriously and we take every precaution to ensure information about our customers remains secure and anonymous.
Embarq by the way is the big local phone company unit spun off from Sprint that is publicly traded.
In my conversation with Mr. Dykes, I asked several times why he wouldn’t name the Internet providers he works with. He said, “It is inappropriate for a vendor to talk about its customers.”
I asked him why users should feel comfortable being involved with a system when the companies using it are afraid to stand up in public and discuss it. I also suggested that customers may want to know in advance whether Internet providers they may choose to do business with will sell information about their browsing to ad targeting firms. He said there is no need to disclose that in advance, particularly because NebuAd allows people to go to its site and request a cookie on their computers that will indicate they don’t want to participate in its tracking program on any Internet provider.
“If someone thinks this is really important, they should simply opt-out,” Mr. Dykes said.
It’s not clear to me that these are the policies that will build the trust level that Mr. Dykes says he needs in order to convince the large Internet providers to sign up for his service.
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