I notice this in the patterns of the spam i receive, bc my friend's names are often uncommon, therefore you notice when you get spam from Hiro, Genevieve, Bix, etc. ANd mind you, these names appear in the message body of my commercial email, not the subject, not the email users name, not in the email itself....

big brother is on the Net taking your cash... Many of the children's games put out have this phishware designed to help market the right items to you...

creepy

Ugh.....

Psh, big deal. Bill Gates is sending me a check for a million dollars all because I forwarded an email to some people.

sorta ironic that microsoft are using offices in beijing, the capital of the country with possibly the most stringent internet monitoring laws in the world. good to know Bill's probably going to play his part in the persecution of countless Chinese citizens in the near future.
still, guess that's what east/west economic harmony's all about. and a multi-million dollar philanthropological (sp.?) trust buys a lot if forgiveness

They better get into legal trouble... but it's probably a good idea to give law enforcement a tool like that. Profiling & wiretapping all in one?

They have a big place in Beijing because of the availability of very well trained people there for much less money than they want here. It only makes good business sense. Everyone wants to complain about factory jobs going overseas, but many high tech places are going overseas as well. Boeing has a rather large office in russia so that they effective get a 24 hour work day, with the project progress being passed back and forth between Russia and their US offices.
On topic though, thats kinda creepy. But it doesn't surprise me.

unravled said

Heeeee hee hee

Why should it be illegal to gather data and make inferences upin that data?

If you don't like it, dont give them data points

If someone were to just follow you around all day taking notes about the places you're going and the things you're doing, then you would probably be allowed to file some sort of harrassment charges. Unless of course, the person was some sort of law enforcement, but Microsoft is not law enforcement, so why should this be any different?

This is ridiculous. Pretty soon in order to get a job or buy anything you'll not only have to pass a background and credit check but also an internet activities check. Yay!

I strongly suspect a marketing motive. Private authorities are just as capable of violating human rights (such as a modicum of privacy) as state authorities, after all - look at the Industrial Revolution, or feudalism, or most of the Third World - and are typically more of a threat under a political economy run by free-market fundamentalists.

It's so easy to purposely skew these (dubious) clustering algorithms into oblivion.

Anyone up for helping me write a browser plug-in that browses at random when you're not at your computer?

Genius. Spat Irn Bru all over my laptop. >

Haven't 'they' known all this for years?
And if 'they' don't, don't 'they' make it up anyway?
Plus of course, who cares?
What's this info good for? If you sue Microsoft Bill Gates can stand up in court and say 'yeah but you like porn'. So what?

Would Bill Gates like to join me?

OK. First off i am no expert on internet technologies... But as far as i understand all the "bad stuff" they could do with this software spyware and addware are already doing. Certainly in terms of directed marketing.

As for tracing personal information: well if they log your IP on any particular site (or group of sites) and then go by the ISP attached to that IP with a search warrant... well, they'll get most of that information pretty quickly as well. I give the example of law enforcement here, because who else would be intereted in finding that information out? A potential employer? I read a survey recently that said that 30% of the time they don't even check the references of their aplicants and in less than half the cases check the qualifications! And that's the info you give them willingly!

This software is good for profiling a particular internet address but in reality i doubt it will be of much use to anyone other than law enforcement.