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Microsoft Search Advertisers Get Personal

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wed Mar 16, 2005 10:18 AM
from the blurring-the-lines dept.
Privacy Microsoft The Internet
Alascom writes "According to this AP report, Microsoft is raising privacy concerns by allowing search advertisers to use personal information. Yusuf Mehdi, a corporate vice president with the MSN unit, said Microsoft has gathered this personal information by tracking users who have logged into its Hotmail e-mail program or other Microsoft Web sites in order to allow advertisers to target their ads to a specific audience."
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  • Nothing new (Score:4, Interesting)

    by suso (153703) * on Wednesday March 16 2005, @10:19AM (#11953234) Homepage Journal
    Did you really expect anything less from Hotmail or Microsoft? I mean come on, this is a website that asks you (auto selected) if you want to subscribe to about 50+ different personalized newsletters when you sign up. I don't see how people can expect their privacy to be respected when the service is free.
    • Mostly agree, and if someone describes their individual wants and needs by signing up to the personalized newsletters, then I would guess they would appreciate some more personalized adverts, rather than requests to buy products they have no desire for. And would probably not recognise that they are being targetted in such a way.

      If you absolutely have to have adverts forced down your throat, then I'm sure the general public would prefer those adverts tailored for them.

      • Re:Nothing new (Score:3, Interesting)

        by dlZ (798734)
        I preper advertising to be tailored if I have to see it. I usually ignore it, but a good example of when it works was my better half wrote me an e-mail about some Hello Kitty stuff (she's a big collector)to my Gmail account. On the side where the ads are were a ton of things related to Hello Kitty, and I was in need of a present. I clicked, found a good deal, and made her very happy.
    • Well, this is basically what Google is already doing, not?

    • Ah Slashdot.... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Saeed al-Sahaf (665390) on Wednesday March 16 2005, @10:43AM (#11953477) Homepage
      How is this any different than Google trolling through your email? Oh, it's not quite as bad, but since it's Microsoft, it's Pure Evil? And of course since Google is our Love Child, it's OK for them to do something that in reality is twice as offensive? Ah Slashdot....
      • Google/Gmail displays ads based on keyword text. The advertiser knows nothing about you as a person, just that your search string/e-mail message contains certain words. Come to think of it, I don't remember ever giving Gmail any statistical info about myself. As far as I remember I just clicked the invite link I got in my e-mail and gave them my desired username and password.

        What Microsoft is doing is what AOL has done for years -- providing data on the actual person such as age, gender, and location.

      • Re:Nothing new (Score:4, Insightful)

        by suso (153703) * on Wednesday March 16 2005, @10:24AM (#11953280) Homepage Journal
        I didn't mean anything free, I meant when its free from a company whose motivation is profit. Its not always true, but there is almost always a profit or information motive.
        • I would say, its free from a company with such a bad record at treating their customers and or their decision making criteria only have profit, profit and 5) PROFIT, would make this news into OldNewsIsSoExciting.jpg
  • I guess we should have read the license agreement....
    • MSN Hotmail

      Hotmail collects information during the registration process, including first and last name, country, region or state, Zip or post code, time zone, gender, birth date and occupation. You may update your registration information at any time from within your Hotmail account by clicking the "Options" button on the navigation bar, and then clicking on the "Personal" icon.

      When you create a Hotmail account, you will also simultaneously create a .NET Passport, which you will use for signing in to your
    • Doesn't matter if you read it when you signed up. The good ol' ever present We-reserve-the-right-to-change-our-policy -at-any-time (read "the We-reserve-the-right-to-screw-you clause") means you're left with the option to agree with the new terms or stop using the service.

  • Good (Score:3, Interesting)

    by tobybuk (633332) on Wednesday March 16 2005, @10:20AM (#11953239)
    Once people get a sniff that Microsoft is playing dirty in the search they have even less incentive to move from google.

    I say bring it on.

    • Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ack154 (591432) on Wednesday March 16 2005, @10:22AM (#11953255)
      Why would I have any incentive to move from Google anyways? They bring nothing new to the table that I'm interested in.
    • Yeah, they're digging their own grave here. Google's Gmail service is bad enough, and it doesn't try and track you by machine address and pass demographics info to 3rd parties.

      MS has really gone way over the deep end this time.

  • Welcome to the Future (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cybrthng (22291) <byronmhome@NoSPAm.yahoo.com> on Wednesday March 16 2005, @10:20AM (#11953240) Homepage Journal
    And you don't think this happens anywhere else? Read the TOS of Google, Yahoo and many other websites you visit.
    • My understanding was that the ads on Google web searches are driven solely by the keywords*, not by any tracked data from previous searches and certainly not from GMail**. Is that not correct?

      * Which, if I understand correctly, is what's at issue here.

      ** I know that GMail ads are driven by the message content. But even that is based on the single message or thread being viewed, not the whole account history, right?

      • What you don't know about google and accept for whatever faith reasons you have is scary.

        Google has more data then we could ever dream up. What they do with it is often illegal for people to discuss because of agreements that are made between publishers & advertisers and 3rd parties they work with.

        Even ads here are tracked. I would be suprised of the partner of sites here don't use the data to define demographics and details of the customer and are part of the "value add" of marketing here.
        • What you don't know about google and accept for whatever faith reasons you have is scary.

          1) The Google TOS makes it clear that personally identifying information is not being shared. For the sake of argument, let's say that they're in compliance with it.

          2) If you look at the ad buying process, there is no hint that any targeting exists beyond immediate keywords. If they use such targeting, they don't charge for it.

          3) As long as #1 is in place, I don't particularly care whether they track aggregate searches

  • Oh no! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 16 2005, @10:20AM (#11953242)
    Hotmail are using personal data to target ads. Microsoft suck!

    If only Google did this sort of thing with GMail. That'd be O.K, because they're Google. Google arn't evil, like those bastards at Microsoft.

  • This is really scary! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 16 2005, @10:21AM (#11953250)
    I got some really scary ads that have been keeping me up at night! How do they know I HAVE A SMALL PENIS! OMG this is a travesty. I should have given them a fake zip code and should have lied about my penis size on the questionnaire.
  • But with 95% less ethics!

  • Personalised isnt a bad thing (Score:5, Interesting)

    by scenestar (828656) on Wednesday March 16 2005, @10:23AM (#11953265) Homepage Journal
    The biggest problem with advertising reamins that products advertised are not interresting to me.

    I have yet to find a advert for cheap merch pressing or jobs for young webdesigners. Instead i get bombarded with ads for crazy frog ringtones.

    As long as they dont read my email line by line it's FINE with me

    • Read carefully. This isn't just about targeting to certain demographics. They are also providing that specific but non-identifying demographic info back to the advertiser.

      Microsoft would then provide the company with detailed information about the demographics of the people who clicked on its ads.

      If I click one of these ads, Microsoft will report to the advertiser that the user clicking this ad is a 37-year old man in ZIP code 94542, and average household income in that ZIP code is $105,393. This rep

      • To defend the parents' math, in case anyone has a 'that cant be right' knee jerk reaction:
        There are something on the order of 20000 people in each zip code. Gender cuts that in half, 10000. Assume average age is around 35, that gives us about 1 in every 13000 people with each birthday (more or less for different ages). This works out very close to the stated 87%.

  • targeted advertising (Score:3, Funny)

    by justforaday (560408) on Wednesday March 16 2005, @10:23AM (#11953268)
    Targeted advertising? Wow, that Microsoft sure does always seem to innovate...
  • From the article:

    "Microsoft's paid search platform will provide detailed -- but not personally identifiable -- information, such as gender, age and location, for many people who use its search engine, allowing advertisers to target their ads to a specific audience."

    Privacy concerns my ass. This is just one more "Micro$oft is the Devil!" scare story.
    • Followed up with exactly the same thing that Google, Yahoo!, and many other companies do:

      "For example, a car company could choose to have Microsoft display its sports car link when a man types in certain keywords, and a link to an SUV model when a woman uses the search criteria."

      Not a privacy concern. It's using the Internet's advantages to the benefit of 1) the advertiser and 2) the consumer (potentially).

      If I'm surfing for "SUV" then maybe I would rather see sponsored links for SUV companies rather t
  • this is turning in to an MS-bashfest, but what they are doing isn't far off from what Google and Yahoo do as well, using content from your mail or information from your account to target advertising? Maybe my tinfoil hat is just starting to chafe a little, but I don't think what Google, MSN or Yahoo does in regards to this stuff is really a big deal, at least not bigger a deal than what your credit card, bank or even insurance company do with similair information.

    I'm all for bashing MS, but if we call them

  • People still use Hotmail? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by bigtallmofo (695287) on Wednesday March 16 2005, @10:25AM (#11953287)
    I've witnessed a mass-exodus from Hotmail in the last few months. Complaints range from:

    1. Being asked to type in a human-verifier code everytime you send an email
    2. Server Busy errors for hours or even days
    3. Account unavailable due to maintenance issues for hours or even days
    4. Horrible interface
    5. Spotty spam protection from everyone except the copious amount that Hotmail sends you

    I have a Hotmail account that's about 7 years old that I still check from time to time, but I can't imagine using it on a day-to-day basis.

  • An international view (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 16 2005, @10:26AM (#11953290)
    I live in Sweden, where this sort of thing is illegal unless you ask your customer for permission first.

    Could this spell problems for Microsoft Sweden, or MS in any other (most likely european) country with the same laws?

    Yes, MS has registered and is using hotmail.se.
    • In the UK under the data protection act IIRC they can't distribute your information to other companies without your permission, but maybe their EULA gives them permission to do this?

  • Not really personal information... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TheNecromancer (179644) on Wednesday March 16 2005, @10:27AM (#11953309)
    From the article:
    Microsoft's paid search platform will provide detailed -- but not personally identifiable -- information, such as gender, age and location, for many people who use its search engine, allowing advertisers to target their ads to a specific audience.

    Notice they aren't releasing any information (like your name, etc.) that would explicitly identify the person to the advertisers.

    I don't see a real problem with privacy here, it just looks like generalized demographic info that is useful to the advertisers.

    • Re:Not really personal information... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by chialea (8009) <chialea AT gmail DOT com> on Wednesday March 16 2005, @10:41AM (#11953457) Homepage
      >Notice they aren't releasing any information (like your name, etc.) that would explicitly identify the person to the advertisers.

      There is some rather interesting research on this. Gender, age, and location is enough to identify most people, since, really, there are a limited number of people in each cartesian-type category. Note that this is different from aggregate data, which may be less personally identifiable, depending on how it's done.

      The people at the data privacy lab have gone through and identified people in "non-personally identifiable" information released by several sources. Part of the problem is that you can put these sources of data together with high confidence and both narrow down individual people and gather a LOT of information about them. I'm sure they have some papers up if you're interested:

      http://privacy.cs.cmu.edu/

      Lea

  • Privacy Schmivacy (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Ridgelift (228977) on Wednesday March 16 2005, @10:27AM (#11953310)
    FTA: "Microsoft's paid search platform will provide detailed -- but not personally identifiable -- information, such as gender, age and location, for many people who use its search engine, allowing advertisers to target their ads to a specific audience."

    Yeah, right. You target an ad to a person, they respond, and now you've got their age, location, etc. Once again the rights of the corporation outweight the rights of the individual.

  • Interesting tidbits & Beware Relational Databa (Score:3, Funny)

    by Fox_1 (128616) on Wednesday March 16 2005, @10:27AM (#11953311) Homepage
    From Article:
    Yusuf Mehdi, a corporate vice president with the MSN unit, said Microsoft has gathered this personal information by tracking users who have logged into its Hotmail e-mail program or other Microsoft Web sites, and then matching the data they provided with publicly known demographics, such as average income for a particular ZIP code.

    From Yusuf Mehdi bio:
    In addition, Mehdi is also responsible for leading Microsoft's platform efforts for online advertising and digital marketing with responsibility for brand, direct marketing, pay for performance and business intelligence systems.

    From the article:
    Microsoft has made its name selling software, he (analyst David Garrity) said, and the new model of giving a product away and making money from advertising requires a steep learning curve.

    and I love this name:
    Chris Hoofnagle of the Electronic Privacy Information Center said Microsoft's efforts are part of an industrywide trend of using personal information to garner advertising dollars.

  • Yet another reason not to use Microsoft Search.

  • You expected privacy? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by catdevnull (531283) on Wednesday March 16 2005, @10:32AM (#11953355)
    OK, you signed up to use "free" e-mail from the largest corporate player known for it's less-than-ethical tactics and you expected to get something for nothing from Microsoft? Yikes, people. I refused from the get go. My gut said it was a gimmick.

    Nothing is ever free from a corporation--they've got people studying consumers to find out how to make a buck off of them. That's no conspiracy theory--it's just corporate life. That's why I work at an .EDU. [That and I'm a bit of a masochist].
    • Nothing is ever free from a corporation

      And this applies to Google and Gmail as well. Google trolls your email to "serve" you adverts. Of course, Google is a Slashdot Love Child, so it's kind of OK, sort of winked at. But Microsoft, on the other hand... Pure Evil for something that is half as half baked as the Google deal. Ah, Slashdot.... Full of hypocrisy.

    • Re:You expected privacy? (Score:4, Funny)

      by DenDave (700621) on Wednesday March 16 2005, @10:48AM (#11953534)
      Yep.. I abandoned my hotmail account years ago when they came with additional terms of use and mandatory passport... as for yahoo, I went to yahoo.co.uk as at the time they didn't register all that much and they are still certain that I am 89 years old living in antarctica and I have an avid interest in receiving free information about birdwatching, these free informational mails are forwarded to my hotmail account, which I haven't even thought about since 1998...

    • I signed up for free email before hotmail was bought by microsoft. I remember the day I logged in and the little butterfly logo had landed on the page, sad day. The privacy agreements had to of changed.

      On a side note I still think it's hilarious that microsofts mascot is a bug.

  • From the article: "That's probably the thing I feel worst about over the last few years -- not making our own R&D investment," Ballmer said. Umh, wasn't there a certain monkey dance that is regretted more?
  • If they go off the contents of my Hotmail inbox, I'll get direct contact with people that can supply me with the following:

    A larger penis!
    A better sex life!
    Breast Implants! Woohoo!
    And a spic and span clean credit report!

    MSN Search here I come!

  • A Internet business plan that _works..._ (Score:3, Funny)

    by dpbsmith (263124) on Wednesday March 16 2005, @10:38AM (#11953424) Homepage
    1) Collect personal information for years with privacy notice consisting of twenty pages of legal language displayed in a 4"x1" scroll box. First line reads "Your privacy is our foremost concern." Last line reads "Terms may be changed at any time without notice."

    2) Don't do anything until you've got enough information to be valuable.

    3) Change terms without notice.

    4) Sell personal information and PROFIT!

  • cookies (Score:3)

    by Alain Williams (2972) on Wednesday March 16 2005, @10:39AM (#11953436) Homepage
    This is the sort of reason that I go through my browser cookies every couple of months and zap anything that I don't recognise and want to keep.

    OK: that won't fix all tracking (including this M$ one) but it helps.

  • Their privacy info. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by blanks (108019) on Wednesday March 16 2005, @10:48AM (#11953532) Homepage Journal
    From their terms of service and privacy info.

    http://privacy1.msn.com/

    These are just random bits I collected that related to advertisers and personal information.

    Also you may want to read the pasport privacy link, as this is how msn connects all their sites.

    http://www.passport.net/Consumer/Privacy Policy.asp?PPlcid=2057

    At some sites, MSN collects personal information, such as your e-mail address, name, home or work address or telephone number. MSN may also collect demographic information, such as your post code, age, gender, preferences, interests and favorites. Information collected by MSN may be combined with information obtained from other Microsoft services and other companies

    The information we collect may be combined with information obtained from other Microsoft services and other companies.

    MSN may also place Web beacons from third parties on our site in order to compile aggregated statistics and to help determine the effectiveness of our joint promotional or advertising campaigns. MSN prohibits Web beacons on our site from being used by third parties to access your personal information.

    Use of Third Party Ad Networks

    The majority of the online banner advertisements you see on MSN Web pages are displayed by MSN.

    Your registration information is used to operate the site, for demographic statistics, and to display appropriate individualized advertisements.

    In addition, MSN allows other companies, called third-party ad servers or ad networks, to display advertisements on MSN Web pages. Some of these ad networks may place a persistent cookie on your computer. Doing this allows the ad network to recognize your computer each time they send you an online advertisement. In this way, ad networks may compile information about where you, or others who are using your computer, saw their advertisements and determine which ads are clicked on. This information allows an ad network to deliver targeted advertisements that they believe will be of most interest to you.

  • And? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tomstdenis (446163) <.moc.liamg. .ta. .sinedtsmot.> on Wednesday March 16 2005, @10:49AM (#11953535) Homepage
    How can you expect privacy when you're giving your info to another person?

    Microsoft didn't force you to login to hotmail. And the fact that you happen to have private information there is your own damn fault.

    It would be different if your ISP was giving out your emails or other details since you pay them for the service...

    And you really don't think Google isn't laughing at the stock of "private" information stored in their gmail archives?

    Tom

  • Ooooh...they wanted my real information? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by neckdeepinspecialsau (756133) on Wednesday March 16 2005, @10:49AM (#11953541) Homepage
    Does anyone put real information into hotmail or yahoo mail services?

    If you do and you don't want to feel free to use my "real information":

    Bob Smith 1313 Mockingbirdlane Beverly Hills Califonia 90210 555-555-5555 (h) 555-555-5555 (c) alternate email ifjeufeiehhc@yahoo.com

    The real question is do they feel guilty charging for junk data?

    • Oh, they don't make money selling the junk data. They make money selling RELIABLE data. Any website you go to can see your IP address and that IP address can be matched with the real-world area it serves. In US urban and suburban areas this will most often pin down your true location within a few miles. In rural areas and in other countries it can ususally pin people down within a several dozen miles.

      Just try this website [sarangworld.com] to convert your IP to a real-world address. For me it reported one town over, about a

  • GMail (Score:3, Insightful)

    by northcat (827059) on Wednesday March 16 2005, @10:58AM (#11953631) Journal
    GMail placed context sensitive ads based on people's private emails. In competition (maybe not in direct competition, but still in competition) MSN is going a step further and doing this. In competition Google or someone else might go a step even further and do something even worse. That's why even a small case of invasion of privacy is bad -- it leads to competition in unhealthy areas and it gives more justification for bigger transgressions -- and that's why some of the hue and cry raised over gmail was justified. (And of course, there is also the justifiable argument that even a small case of invasion of privacy is not acceptable)

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