'Like' it or not, online ads are getting personal - CNN.com - 1 views
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industry speak for ads that target users through the use of cookies that can track your internet browsing and shopping history, among other activities.
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Robert Porter on 09 Feb 11Some people might view this as an invasion of privacy. The use of cookies by the industry to 'track' the users activities sure does point out a valid point. Most consumers would see advertisers as using 'personal' information to target what the users might have more interest in. In the eyes of the consumers this is seen as generally bad, in the eyes of the advertisers this type of advertising would not only keep away the advertisements that people don't want to see for products they don't need, but for advertisements for products they might want and need as the user travels to different sites. Cookies enable for this to happen, and although there is work on the web-browsers to keep advertisers away from information "internet browsing and shopping history". A question is asked though, how much personal information have people been giving away unknowingly?
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"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."
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-Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Schmidt has a valid point that what people do on the internet shouldn't be something people want to conceal. Yet there should be limits that advertisers and any site that uses peoples information on. People don't want to know the fact that everything they do and click on in a site will be recorded down as activity and then process to be put into a category. Just like in Feed, where Titus and his friends go to the mall the Feed immediately advertises cloths that they would want, or cloths that the feed thinks they want. Even with no alert the feed does this to Titus throughout the book, even when he is just laying there or sleeping the Feed advertises things that he would want and that he should by those things based on his shopping history and habits, just like these advertisements are foreseen to be becoming.
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Because information is vital, people view information (that is helpful) as valid sources of income. Sites that take your information for something can in all their rights, sell it to another advertising company. Hence the source of spam emails. So giving away personal information is a bad idea for you and the site that is distributing your information should not have that right.
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The Article By CNN states an uncomfortable outlook onto what might be a more personal advertising than ever before. Big sites such as Facebook and Twitter are mentioned in this article about tracking your 'likes' onto post, businesses, products and similar things among them. Both Google and Mozilla have recognized this as a slight problem as they both are working on a choice to block out cookies (For anyone who doesn't know what cookies are, they are what track your every move on the internet and any site you go to can have access to them, within limits of course). Questions are raised about this though, by both my Anderson and I. If this persist and evolves, would this type of advertising become as radical as it is seen in Feed? Would the advertising for this become more personal? In what limits are these ads allowed to do this within the law? Who would pay nearly 100,000 dollars to advertise in an social site? How far would advertisers go to make more money by 'invading' someones privacy or monitoring someones online activity? All are valid concerns raised from this article, and should be considered as time goes on.