Editing 1303: Profile Info
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==Explanation== | ==Explanation== | ||
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− | + | A trend in new privacy policies on social networks and email providers, allows the social network to harvest or let their advertisers harvest various information about you. A recent trend is to allow harvesting of profile picture and real name, and is mostly an automated process, with little to no human interaction. Your information is collected in context with other information, such as your friends and contacts. This information is combined with your purchase or product review history and shown to people (typically your friends and contacts) who are viewing the products you purchased. This is an attempt to automate peer-to-peer marketing. | |
− | The title text references the fact that most of these companies have an "opt out" option so that your name won't be used, but then emphasizes that | + | The title text references the fact that most of these companies have an "opt out" option so that your name won't be used, but then emphasizes that YouTube (a subsidiary of Google) recently forced YouTube user accounts to be tied to Google+. Google+ requires the use of the 'first name' 'last name' convention typical of western cultures, and one cannot 'opt out' (This requirements allows the abbreviation of names). However, this has not stopped people from using names that aren't their own, such as "Barack Obama" and "Chuck Norris". Some of these websites allowed the use of aliases in their initial terms of use, but then later change the TOCs to prohibit use of "false" names. YouTube was one such system which recently merged with Google+ for authentication automatically linking your false-name account with your real name account, or in some cases banning and blocking people with suspected false name accounts. |
− | To try to put a stop to his own information being used, [[Cueball]] sets his last name to "If-you-see-this-name-in-an-ad-give-the-product-a-one-star-review-Smith", a name which includes a phrase that would negatively affect any marketer's attempts to advertise an online product. | + | To try to put a stop to his own information being used, [[Cueball]] sets his last name to "If-you-see-this-name-in-an-ad-give-the-product-a-one-star-review-Smith", a name which includes a phrase that would negatively affect any marketer's attempts to advertise an online product. This name would pass though most harvesting software as-is, and may very well end up being used in such ads, unless some very clever software is able to detect sentences as part of names or similar. In fact much spam is stopped by identifying emails through {{w|Honeypot_(computing)|Honeypot}} accounts (as one of many methods). |
Hence engineering part of your profile could be a winning strategy to signal to your friends that your information is harvested without your express knowledge. | Hence engineering part of your profile could be a winning strategy to signal to your friends that your information is harvested without your express knowledge. | ||
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:Last Name: If-you-see-this-name-in-an-ad-give-the-product-a-one-star-review-Smith | :Last Name: If-you-see-this-name-in-an-ad-give-the-product-a-one-star-review-Smith | ||
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:How to deal with companies harvesting your profile for marketing | :How to deal with companies harvesting your profile for marketing | ||
{{comic discussion}} | {{comic discussion}} | ||
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]] | [[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]] |