Michael Zimmer.org

Helen Nissenbaum and others on the PORTIA and PRESIDIO projects have released a white paper describing Privads, a client-side behavioral advertising system designed to protect users’ privacy:
Online behavioral advertising (OBA) refers to the practice of tracking users across web sites in order to infer user interests and preferences. These interests and preferences are then used for selecting ads to present to the user. There is great concern that behavioral advertising in its present form infringes on user privacy. The resulting public debate — which includes consumer …

Today, Google announced its long-awaited behavioral targeted advertising program.
Building from its acquisition of DoubleClick, Google’s new ad system — which it refers to as “interest-based advertising” — will use cookies to track users across the multitude of sites that show Google’s display ads, allowing Google to create a profile of each user based on the kind of sites visited. Google will then target ads to a user based on that profile.
While Yahoo!, Micrsoft, and AOL have all been engaged in behavioral targeting for some time, Google’s entrance into this controversial …

There’s been a flurry of activity in recent weeks related to the privacy concerns of online behavioral advertising.
Earlier this month, TRUSTe released a whitepaper designed to help online businesses assess and better understand their own privacy practices related to data collection and retention. The intent is to help these companies better demonstrate transparency — and better meet consumer expectations — related to their behavioral advertising data practices.
Central to this effort is TRUSTe’s “Checklist for Businesses” which walks businesses through a series of questions to help them understand their own business …

Yahoo has issued a press release on their new ad sales system, AMP! that provided a few new insights into this “powerful new online advertising platform.” The New York Times broke this story earlier, which I blogged about here.
Interestingly, the Yahoo release avoids using the phrase “behavioral targeting” (which is mentioned in the NYT piece), and instead note how the system will allow publishers to connect with “their exact target audiences across the increasingly fragmented Internet” and enable “precise geographic, demographic, and interest-based …

The New York Times is reporting details of Yahoo’s forthcoming new advertising system which will allow targeting of ads based on users’ online activities:
Yahoo said the system, called AMP and still months away from being ready, would greatly simplify the task of selling online ads, allowing Yahoo’s publishing partners, for instance, to place ads on their own sites as well as on Yahoo and on the sites of other publishers in the company’s growing network. Advertisers will be able to focus those ads by demographic profile, geography and online behavior, …

On the heels of growing public awareness of how “large Web companies are learning more about people than ever from what they search for and do on the Internet, gathering clues about the tastes and preferences of a typical user several hundred times a month,” a New York legislator has drafted a bill seeking to limit how Internet companies collect information about people online and use it for targeted advertising.
According to The Times, the bill “would make it a crime… for certain Web companies to use personal information about consumers …

On the heels of clearing the way for the Google-DoubleClick deal, and resulting from a recent meeting on behavioral advertising, the FTC today released a statement for comment on behavioral advertising: “Possible Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising” (PDF). In it, they propose some self-regulatory principles for behavioral advertising and now seeks comment on the principles from interested parties. Following is a summary of the key issues, proposed principles, and my initial comments.
Transparency and consumer control
Issue: Interested parties cite the need for greater transparency and consumer control to address the …

Following recent announcements by Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Facebook, MySpace has announced it will begin targeting advertisements based on users profiles and behavior on their social networking platform. As explained in this NYTimes article:
The algorithms make their judgments partly on certain keywords in the profile. A member might be obvious by describing himself as a financial information enthusiast, for example. But more than likely the clues are more subtle. He might qualify for that category by listing Donald Trump as a hero, Fortune magazine as a favorite publication or “Wall …

The social networking site Facebook is planning to to enter the behavioral targeting game, letting marketers customize their ads for the millions of Facebook customers who visit the site daily. Given the “mountain of information” users openly divulge on the site, Facebook very well could win the targeted advertising game.
Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft have all recently announced varying plans to engage in behavioral targeting of their users in order to target advertising messages. These search engine giants collect and mine bits of information about me based on my searches, my …

In response to recent concerns about Internet and search companies developing the means to track and profile users based on psychological and behavioral traits, the FTC has announced plans to host a town hall meeting to “address the consumer protection issues raised by the practice of tracking consumers’ activities online to target advertising – or ‘behavioral advertising.’”
Topics of discussion include:

How does online behavioral advertising work? What types of companies play a role in this market?
What types of data are collected? Is the data personally identifiable or …

In my dissertation I outline the quest for the “perfect search engine” – a search engine capable of indexing all available information and providing fast and relevant results. The perfect search engine will have to have “perfect reach” to deliver any type of online content from all online (and, increasingly, offline) sources, as well as “perfect recall” to deliver personalized and relevant results that are informed by who the searcher is.
For example, given a search for “Paris Hilton,” the perfect search engine will know whether to deliver results about the …

Not wanting to be outdone by Google’s recent news about profiling users based on their psychological profiles, reports have emerged that Microsoft is developing new technologies to identify users based on their browsing habits:
IF YOU thought you could protect your privacy on the web by lying about your personal details, think again. In online communities at least, entering fake details such as a bogus name or age may no longer prevent others from working out exactly who you are.
That is the spectre raised by new research conducted by Microsoft. The …

The Guardian reports on a patent filing by Google revealing how the company could compile psychological profiles of millions of web users by covertly monitoring the way they play online games:
The company thinks it can glean information about an individual’s preferences and personality type by tracking their online behaviour, which could then be sold to advertisers. Details such as whether a person is more likely to be aggressive, hostile or dishonest could be obtained and stored for future use, it says.
…The patent says: “User dialogue (eg from role playing games, …