google nominated for Big Brother Awards 2003

for invading personal privacy with cookie-based search profiles

[muesli]

as futurezone.orf.at, an austrian IT news site with good relations to the human rights group 'privacy international', just reports google has been nominated for this year's Big Brother Awards.

the group suspects google is using search profiles stored in longliving cookies to serve targeted ads thru their new ad network.

original article (in german): [futurezone.orf.at...]
big brother awards: [privacyinternational.org...]

[brotherhood of LAN]

very cool, at least its highlighting a potential problem area.

Do you think its justified muesli? putting google up there.

//added
theyd win my vote if they are using whois, and again, if they are, i insist on them telling me ;)

[allanp73]

Is there are English version of this article?

[muesli]

Do you think its justified muesli? putting google up there.

i'm fine with advertising targeted on the search i just did on the results page. i think it is also ok to target ads there based on my last, say, 100 searches. why not, it's serving me more relevant ads after all.

but when i don't use google but any other site, e.g. a blog, i would feel abused if they used my search profiles for targeting. if they are doing this, i'd say yes, they deserve to be nominated.

[Yidaki]

Browser: Preferences: Cookies: Disable

<whisper>I can't tell you more right now ... they are watching me ...</whisper>

[Powdork]

Browser: Preferences: Cookies: Disable

Tha will fix the problem. We shouldn't have to cut off our hand though.

[muesli]

update: google hasn't won a big brother award. delta airlines, the patriot act and others have.
[privacyinternational.org...]