Interesting People mailing list archives
IP: more on user tracking in search engines
From: Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>
Date: Sat, 01 May 1999 00:06:44 -0400
Date: 30 Apr 1999 13:52:38 -0400 From: colonel () monmouth com (Col. G. L. Sicherman) Subject: Re: What's DejaNews up to? (Smith, RISKS-20.34) I don't know what commercial advantages DejaNews may gain by tracking clicks, but this can be helpful to users of any search engine. For example, consider a search on bambi book children The first two entries on the list are: 1. Book exotic dancer Bambi for your next stag party! Not suitable for children. ... 2. Bambi, by Felix Salten, is a wonderful book for children. Here's how to order: ... Most people will select item 2. Knowing this, the search engine will start presenting item 2 at the head of the list. It's an automatic way to make search engines more helpful--at the risk of making it harder to find things that most people don't want. Col. G. L. Sicherman web: <http://www.monmouth.com/~colonel/> work: sicherman () lucent com home: colonel () mail monmouth com [... and they are easily Bambioozled. PGN] ------------------------------ Date: 29 Apr 1999 14:30:37 -0400 From: Matt Curtin <cmcurtin () interhack net> Subject: RISKS of the net's success... (Re: DejaNews, Smith, RISKS 20.34) As noted, this business of tracking links is not new. DejaNews and HotBot aren't the only ones doing this, either. In other strange-but-true news, after releasing a report that was generally critical of Netscape's implementation of the "Smart Browsing" feature, we discovered that that very feature was claiming our report is "related" to the Unabomber Manifesto. A good summary of this was covered in Lauren Weinstein's PRIVACY Forum Digest 08.06[1]. It was also reported that AltaVista is preparing to give preferential treatment in search results to those who pay for their listings. [In Lauren's PRIVACY item, he noted that AltaVista says that those listings will be marked as having been paid for. PGN] Lauren made a really interesting point in the PRIVACY Forum Digest that really seems to cut through all of the noise around these annoyances and problems, getting to the larger problem, that is the risks associated with the Internet's success. He wrote: It's of enough concern when we learn that major search engines (e.g. AltaVista) are about to start selling search result placements. It's of equal concern if users need to be worried that other search results, returned by other search engines, might potentially be skewed by unobvious forces not related to an unbiased analysis of the sites in question, even if monetary considerations are not the factor involved. If search engines begin to lose the trust of their users, one of the net's most powerful category of tools may be reduced to nothing more than automated pitchmen using every means possible, no matter how biased, to try pull the yokels into the tent. In that case, it will not only be a serious loss for us all, but will also create the potential for a sort of "information pollution" on a scale we've never seen before. Is it possible that the success of the net will lead to its own demise from the perspective of a useful resource that serves its end users? [1] http://www.vortex.com/privacy/priv.08.06 Matt Curtin cmcurtin () interhack net http://www.interhack.net/people/cmcurtin/
Current thread:
- IP: more on user tracking in search engines Dave Farber (Apr 30)