See, now this is silly to me, because I don't get it. If you don't want your shit tracked by/on facebook, then don't give them the information. I have Facebook, but it's completely benign. The only thing on there is my email address. How the eff does BlockBuster even get access to your facebook account? (not that I care, I don't participate)

Also? It's CAKE to produce and upload your own website. (Says the Mac user.) It's easy and it's pretty and I have my own. If you want to contact me, feel free. If you don't, then I don't have to wade thru the emails.

That is all.

baristabrawl

I'm sure that someone's tracking would eventually get on my nerves, but how bad can it get? Really?

I'm just sayin'.

baristabrawl

I'm sick and tired of agendas and ads and commercials and politicians and every other nosy son of a bitch getting in my face and either a. telling me how to live my life or b. trying to sell me something/someone.

Tired, tired, tired!

banmojo

I say all this as a early-adopter consumer, who is exposed to ads and also advertises. For nothing in return, I tell people about products and services I like, because if I like it, someone else might. I even filled out the fairly invasive Gawker survey from last week. I'm not anti-advertising at all, but there's a point that is consistently crossed by the marketing types. You're too aggressive. From commercials on TV played louder than the program, to product placements as part of the plot of a story, to intrusive profiling. It's really all just too much.

Just too fucking much.

There's a certain line that marketing types

Mr. Gunn

Phone, Air, energy and banking, all of t hem went through significant de-regulation, made a few years of great profits then ran in to significant troubles.

I was hoping you had an example of de-regulation helping a market.

I think that internet 'privacy' should get some government oversight. Sufficient data mining is equivalent to unreasonable search.

Techguy1138

And no one in their right mind would say all regulation is bad. Some is good. I would like to say that the market would keep fresh beef in my fridge, but the fact that there is some oversight on that, seems like a good thing.

Bladefist

You aren't talking about private regulation. You are talking about publishable features.

Not the same.

The government has the responsibility to keep the infrastructure of the country in good repair and the only way that can be done is via regulation.

The fact that regulations seem in effective can be for many reasons. A big one is that businesses try their best to subvert these regulations. The second is that the federal government lacks sufficient resources to check and ensure compliance.

The food infrastructure benefits greatly from FDA regulations and guidelines. In your example what meat packing industry would proudly report to the consumer over 1 million pounds of questionable beef destroyed. Even with these regulation in place food distributors bend the rules and overlook their own infractions.

Air infrastructure is another area where we have recently seen the corporate will to subvert regulations.

What happens in a for profit marketplace is that corporation give the illusion of self regulation to the customer to boost sales while doing what they can to reap profits.

That is why we had a credit crisis. There was very little regulation and the investment places ran with it. Even though it may have been against long term stability they hid the truth of risks from investors, the customers, in order to garner massive profits.

What industries have gotten more reputable since their deregulations? I can only think of the failures.

Can you please name successes, in all seriousness I can not think of any.

Techguy1138

There should be a requirement for any website that collects personally identifiable data to explicitly tell you when you are being tracked.

I remember that this used to happen. I would get a pop-up message say that by agreeing to go forward on a website that they would access my browser activity and track my activity on their site.

I liked that. Sometimes I would agree, sometimes not but I got to choose who saw what.

Techguy1138

Bladefist

As for the ID theft, have you paid attention to all the commercials for credit cards. I mean, identity theft is the new thing. All of them fight over who will keep you the safest, who will pay you back if someone steals your identity, etc etc etc. I mean it's just crazy. So once again, the market saw a profit center, took off with it, now you're safer. Now, if it all happened because of the government made them, they may be. I don't know know the history of how the protection started, but I know now, they compete over who will protect your identity the most.

Bladefist

That aside, without government regulation, we would be screwed. Granted many of our regulatory bodies are seriously broken and regulation can (and often is) overdone, but look at the whole identity theft issue. ID theft is a problem that the industry created and would never have seen any light of hope because everyone was making money but the end consumer.

If it wasn't for a ton of states passing credit freeze laws, we'd still be at the mercy of all the credit companies.

Or for a simpler example, if every company that provides a service does it the same way, my not using their service doesn't change anything. Especially if it's a needed service.

aikoto

There should be no list. Yes, you should be able to opt-out of tracking systems, but can you imagine the implications of a governmental do-not-track list from a developer's standpoint?

Here's an example: Those ad networks that track you from page to page, and tweak the ads displayed accordingly would have to consult the do-not-track database on every pageload (and it would have to somehow recognize you as someone in the database...impossible unless you have a static IP). This would slow down your pageload by a lot, and put a huge load on the list's servers with all the sites querying it.

Sorry, this just won't work. Politicians don't understand technology, and they should consult people who know what the heck is possible and/or an acceptable idea before suggesting $@%&@!# like this.

redwall_hp

This system would also logically require companies to maintain a record of HOW data was aquired, so companies could prove compliance.

Once rights are established, legal recourse is available when information is sold or distributed without our consent.

Let's play the what-if game. You're in the middle of a bitter divorce and custody dispute. You go online to buy your mother a blouse for her birthday. Your data (male + buys women's clothing) is sold and you receive a catalog for cross-dressers. Your wife gets the catalog and this information is used against you and you lose custody.

If there was a universal opt-out, then the company that sold your data would have potentially face legal consequences.

SkokieGuy

right now, a privacy notice basically says "we won't share any of your information to anyone if the law specifically disallows it, but if the law allows it (or more accurately doesn't disallow it), we will sell it to anybody & everybody. hell, we'll give it away for free if no one is willing to buy it."

i would be more in favor of a graph that lists every partner/third party that received information & what information they receive in particular.

mac-phisto

Everyone signs up for this list
List is compromised
spammers and shady folks have one-stop shop for getting millions of emails/ips/whatevers.

unklegwar

IP address? Doesn't stay the same.
email? Your email address doesn't follow you around to every site you visit.

What exactly is the universal identifier they should use to tell that one person shouldn't be tracked, no matter where they go and what computer they use?

unklegwar

So if a beauty products company knows that celebrity X uses their products and mentions this (profits from the use of data collection), the celebrity can sue, even though the information is truthful.

If doubleclick sells my demographic information, and profits from it, I receive no compensation and have no basis to sue, whether the information is truthful or not. Is my worth as a person less than celebrity X?

Since my personal information has value, it seems only logical that the decision to offer that information for sale rests with me.

SkokieGuy

Logical Extremes

Now if the American idiot, I mean consumer, would just not use those services, it would be fixed by Tuesday.

Bladefist

Well the reason you are partly right is, American consumers are idiots. This blog, consumerist, has such a small percent of Americans, and yet, you see how much it accomplishes? I mean you put a complaint on here, and 2 days later you see another post how that company fixed all the problems, and went above and beyond.

The problem is Americans (and I am one) are dumb and lazy, don't check into privacy policies, don't care, and therefore the company don't really need to worry about it.

And thats the exact same reason why the government shouldn't regulate it. If the people are too worthless to care about their privacy, why spend our tax money on it? There has to be some kind of liability on the people. Everyone who comes here, is making the American market better.

Bladefist

aikoto

AstroPig7

hi

Or, we can not shop at places do not have an acceptable privacy policy. Consumer power will always work better. It speaks directly to the executives in a big way

Bladefist

I swear. Companies are always whining for "self regulation" but looks what happens when they do it. Case example: google with their 18 month policy. Oh they did us SUCH a big favor by dropping it from 24. BullS! They have no right and no reason to keep our personally identifiable information connected to their aggregate search data after they've served us the search results. Unless of course they want to market to us or sell the data.

(pic:[www.antiquark.com])

aikoto

Papa Midnight

Choicepoint probably knows more about me than my family does because so many retailers give them data. Also, nothing is stopping the government or any other motivated group from buying data for other purposes. Talk about spying.

bohemian

Some paid sites still have ads. I think it's because companies get your money AND ad revenue.

Way back when the Interlog was still brand new, I remember people saying that they didn't want to pay for content online because they already pay for access.

Today, many people hate seeing ads because it clutters the web site.

Very few web sites do ads well. Google is the only one I see that uses ads that are not obstructive and are relevant (case in point: search for "car parts").

But going to a web site and seeing that 30-50% of the page space is ads...is discusting. This is why I hate newspapers. I'm sure if you took out all the ads in a regular news paper, you'd have about 10-15 pages.

mike

Over the years I have stopped using many companies that force opt-out on me. Screw em, greedy bastids.

Big Flicker

while you're at it, why not go through your entire spam folder and "opt-out" of all that spam you're getting by opening it all up and clicking all the "unsubscribe" links? haha.

prameta1

AndyMan1

Buran

I imagine the solution will be to have a free site with tracking and ads and a paid access version without it.

Steve Trachsel, Ace

In the meantime, I'm using Adblock, and blocking all 3rd party cookies. If companies can't play nicely, they don't get to play at all.

AndyMan1

sikantis

ByeBye

FrugalFreak