Ads getting age and sex of viewers against privacy policy
I've noticed that ad calls get my age and sex even if though I have my birthday set to not display. As far as I can tell, this is against the privacy policy, which states:
If you have a Plus account or are a Basic or Early Adopter account viewing a Plus account's journal or other content, LiveJournal shares your voluntarily-provided public profile information (such as sex, age, location and interests) and your voluntarily-provided advertising preferences information with advertisers.
When you enter your sex in your profile, it is never, to my knowledge, publicly displayed on your profile, and as such is not PUBLIC profile information as described in the privacy policy.
So, in short, the giving of LJ's sex, which is not public information in people's profiles, and the giving of age when a user's birthday is hidden, are both violations of LiveJournal's own privacy policy.
But the advertisers get it anyway. I expect either the privacy policy to change or this little detail to be conveniently ignored, because I doubt the advertising wants to give up its demographics data.
Note: Please see this thread for possible caveats on this assertion, as Six Apart's ad server might not pass the information directly to any advertisers, and how the weasel words "However, by selecting, interacting with or viewing an ad you are consenting to the possibility that the advertiser will make the assumption that you meet the targeting criteria used to display the ad." might provide a way around the previous statements.
If you have a Plus account or are a Basic or Early Adopter account viewing a Plus account's journal or other content, LiveJournal shares your voluntarily-provided public profile information (such as sex, age, location and interests) and your voluntarily-provided advertising preferences information with advertisers.
When you enter your sex in your profile, it is never, to my knowledge, publicly displayed on your profile, and as such is not PUBLIC profile information as described in the privacy policy.
So, in short, the giving of LJ's sex, which is not public information in people's profiles, and the giving of age when a user's birthday is hidden, are both violations of LiveJournal's own privacy policy.
But the advertisers get it anyway. I expect either the privacy policy to change or this little detail to be conveniently ignored, because I doubt the advertising wants to give up its demographics data.
Note: Please see this thread for possible caveats on this assertion, as Six Apart's ad server might not pass the information directly to any advertisers, and how the weasel words "However, by selecting, interacting with or viewing an ad you are consenting to the possibility that the advertiser will make the assumption that you meet the targeting criteria used to display the ad." might provide a way around the previous statements.