on-line privacy
Steve Henn, Marketplace Radio: "Online privacy to get federal attention", 2010/11/12
... basically it [the cell phone in your XBox Kinect] tracks you so you can play video games without a remote control. And it also uses facial recognition software to know who's playing the game. Well executives at Microsoft say they can use that same facial-recognition software to actually target ads, not to just the person playing the game, but anyone sitting in the living room in front of those cameras. So think about that for a second: this game is a huge hit, or the system is a hit. They expect to ship 5 million units by the end of the year. So you know, millions of Americans are going to have cameras in their living room that can track them and know who they are.
... personal information and using personal information in marketing is central to the business model of some of the most successful companies in America right now - this is what Google does, this is what Facebook does. Increasingly it's what Apple and Microsoft do.
Here's a thought - Google and your webcam. They're already recording your searches by IP, and probably with cookies on your PC; what if they could match up your face too? Then they could target ads for people who share a computer. And they might figure out things about you from your image - gender, age, race, glasses, hair loss, smoker, etc - and do even more targeting. Are you wanting to put a piece of tape over that lens now?
You'd probably have to grant your browser access to your camera (or/and microphone). But what if the company that owns the OS (and if you've read that EULA, you know you don't own Windows) decides to capture that data, and decides whom to share it with? We've already caught school administrators using laptop webcams to spy on their students (and their families). People will do whatever they think they can get away with.
[This entry was originally posted as http://syntonic-comma.dreamwidth.org/363092.html on Dreamwidth (where there are
comments).]
... basically it [the cell phone in your XBox Kinect] tracks you so you can play video games without a remote control. And it also uses facial recognition software to know who's playing the game. Well executives at Microsoft say they can use that same facial-recognition software to actually target ads, not to just the person playing the game, but anyone sitting in the living room in front of those cameras. So think about that for a second: this game is a huge hit, or the system is a hit. They expect to ship 5 million units by the end of the year. So you know, millions of Americans are going to have cameras in their living room that can track them and know who they are.
... personal information and using personal information in marketing is central to the business model of some of the most successful companies in America right now - this is what Google does, this is what Facebook does. Increasingly it's what Apple and Microsoft do.
Here's a thought - Google and your webcam. They're already recording your searches by IP, and probably with cookies on your PC; what if they could match up your face too? Then they could target ads for people who share a computer. And they might figure out things about you from your image - gender, age, race, glasses, hair loss, smoker, etc - and do even more targeting. Are you wanting to put a piece of tape over that lens now?
You'd probably have to grant your browser access to your camera (or/and microphone). But what if the company that owns the OS (and if you've read that EULA, you know you don't own Windows) decides to capture that data, and decides whom to share it with? We've already caught school administrators using laptop webcams to spy on their students (and their families). People will do whatever they think they can get away with.
[This entry was originally posted as http://syntonic-comma.dreamwidth.org/363092.html on Dreamwidth (where there are
comments).]