I have to admit I was a little taken aback in class the other week when our guitarist/vocalist/search-engine-optimist friend, Greg Markel, told me I was in surveillance denial.
This came after I asked him how Google or any other search engine could possibly rejigger its search results to match my interests when it would have no idea that I was the one doing the searching.
A bemused grin creased his rock ’n’-roll face. He said search engines know all about me because they track where I go after I log in.
Heh-heh, I thought, I don’t log in, smart guy. I just type stuff into the search box and go.
At this point I do not imagine you are nodding in agreement, and I now know why.
Earlier this week I launched Firefox browser and when my Yahoo home page materialized I noticed over on the right side the greeting, “Hi, edwardcohen.” It didn’t take long for me to figure out what was going on. If you log in to Yahoo Mail – or, I assume, similar services – you stay logged in, even after you quit the browser. A surveillance team in a panel van across the street awaiting your return.
I don’t know how I feel about this.
On the one hand, it’s harmless, right? What is Yahoo going to do, blackmail you by threatening to make public how much time you’re spending at www.sexwithreptiles.com (note to squatters, this domain name is still available)? Let them try it once, and when word gets out a billion people will switch to another search engine overnight.
On the other hand, I can’t help feeling that I am somehow being made a tool for The Man.
Which is why I initially felt a perverse pleasure when I Stumbled Upon the site BugMeNot.com. (More about why I’m capitalizing stumbled upon in a bit.)
BugMeNot helps you supply disinformation to sites at which tell-us-about-yourself registration is compulsory. You just type go to BugMeNot, type in the address of the nosy site, and BugMeNot provides you one or more user name and password combinations that have proven to work. The site claims to have accumulated bogus log-ins/passwords for -- get this -- 208,523 sites. For example, to get into the Internet Movie Database (IMDB.com), try annoying@sogetthis.com and the password “annoy.”
These log-ins let you bypass all of that rigmarole of typing in registration information and then waiting for a confirmation email. And you don’t have to worry about the site deluging you with spam or selling your address to spammers.
Note: BugMeNot says it doesn’t give away log-ins for pay-content sites or pay-content areas within otherwise free sites. So you’re really just screwing the free sites out of marketing data they would find useful in selling ads.
And that brings me to why I said I was initially delighted to find BugMeNot. Since then I’ve been reconsidering. Do I really want to make survival harder for sites like the nytimes.com and IMDB, which provide immense amounts of quality information without charge?( For more on this debate, check out these comments at the journalism site Poynteronline.)
I wrote above that I Stumbled Upon BugMeNot, and here’s why: On the recommendation of a friend I've installed StumbleUpon, which is a browser plug-in that helps you discover new Web pages. You just check off various boxes of categories that interest you (satire, technology, politics, etc.). Then when you press the Stumble button on the browser it takes you to a new page it thinks you will like.
Another button lets you give the page a thumbs-up or thumbs-down, which supposedly helps fine tune the selection of future destinations. I’ve discovered all kinds of cool stuff.
But wait a minute. Tracking of preferences? Fine-tuning of content? This sounds a lot like what Greg warned us about.
Sure enough, as Wikipedia explains, StumbleUpon uses the knowledge it gains of user preferences to deliver targeted advertising: “A small proportion of the 'stumbles' users come across (typically less than 2%) are sponsored pages matching their topics of interest. For example, those signed up for photography will occasionally see an ad related to photography.”
So it's tough to escape from surveillance on the Web. But you tell me, isn’t it all still a bargain?
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