Microsoft Using Personal Data to Target Ads

smooth wombat writes "Microsoft is combing personal data with your search habits to produce targeted ads. Users who use Microsoft's Hotmail email service, msn.com news service and other Microsoft-owned sites will see ads specific to their demographic and interests. From the article: 'Microsoft executives say the system works anonymously and they won't pass on people's names or addresses to advertisers. Executives say they want to foster confidence in users to build a long-term business, and one that gives an incentive to not misuse personal details.' "We're in the early days of behavioral targeting but it's an idea whose time has come,' says Simon Andrews, chief digital strategy officer for WPP Group's MindShare, a large buyer of ad time. 'There is a lot of potential to know if people have been looking at specific sites.'"

This is AWESOME!

[mmell]

I use my hotmail address as a spam honeypot anyhow; now Microsoft is leading the (sp)lambs to the slaughter!

What a shame I don't use Microsoft's "Start" search. ;^D

Oh, and BTW - First Post?

Hmmm

[Twench]

Good thing Google doesn't do this with Gmail by scanning your info and producing targeted ads in a side bar ... oh ... wait!

Meh

[sgt.greywar]

I suppose this sort of thing doesn't really bother me. Frankly oftentimes I even opt-in to this sort of stuff. I like seeing things I am interested in (tech, games, etc) and I am not interested in seeing ads for things that I have zero interest in (donkey calliopes). At least this makes the ad-spam more interesting.

Nothing new under the sun

[malfunct]

This is not new and so far as I know not unique to Microsoft. The advertiser buys a "segment" of people and when a person in the segment views a Microsoft owned website they see the add that is "targeted" to them. A segment of people would be like Male 18-25 who likes cars. To be honest this is the same sort of thing that advertisers have purchased for years its just that Microsoft has the ability to better know if the viewer has those tastes. I'm not sure at all why this is some sort of new privacy concern for people. I also think most of the readers here understand that every other major advertising player online is trying to do the same thing. Those big players probably being Yahoo and Google of course.

Ways to avoid being "tracked" are to clear your cookies and don't sign in to sites. Of course then you will get to see the ads you could care less about instead of something that might possibly be useful to you.

As far as the claim that a person that buys a large portion of ads could start to identify people I don't at all buy it because Microsoft states, and I trust they follow the statement given the scrutiny that they recieve from all sides, that they don't pass your data on. Whats likely is that a person buys a segment for thier ads and at the end they get a report that says, "We were able to satisfy xx% of your request in xx days". They might also get info like "If you had booked your add on xxx.msn.com instead of zzz.msn.com we could have satisfied tt% more of your request and if you had booked both we could have satisfied the entire request."

One way that you could be "identified" is if you actually clicked through any of the ads in which case they could assign your IP or a cookie on your machine to a profile that has the segment information from the ad you clicked through on pre-populated.

I am curious

[Anonymous Coward]

As to how /. readers will react to this compared to the privacy concerns with Gmail [slashdot.org].

To refresh your memory:

Don't want your messages to be readable by the 'wrong' people? Encrypt 'em real good, or don't use email.

But if someone wants to provide a free service, then you get what you pay for. Be sure you read the terms of service. If you don't like it, use something else.

Erase the cookie. Don't use the service. How do you know Yahoo! doesn't read all it's mail?

Nothing to see here, move along...

[xaeridus]

This really isn't anything new. A few years ago I worked on an advertising project that involved tracking your preferences which pulled information from your profile to tailor the ads that you received. It was smart advertising, because it led to higher click-through rates. We didn't pass your information on to other firms unless it was noted in our privacy contract - and even that was a completely separate process. For ads, it was a lot wiser to fill your sidebar and popups with age/sex/interest specific advertising than to show a 14 year old ads for geritol.

Re:Fish are the town, people are the barrel man.

[__aaclcg7560]

Would that be based on Microsoft, Yahoo! or Google research results? Or did you just bump your into the wall to get this idea? Inquiring minds want to know...

Service?

[Fuzzums]

Well. Maybe you're right. I remember last time I clicked on a banner and bought something that was....
Wait. That was... Sorry. Can't remember.

Well let's say that was WAY before 2003.

Confidence?

[ubrgeek]

"Executives say they want to foster confidence in users to build a long-term business"

Shouldn't they start with building a secure operating system, rather than targeted ads?

Re:Hmmm

[rgriff59]

...ads based on the content of the page you are *currently* looking at...

That is a major distinction, and my chief concern. Persistence over sessions can be a pain. People are not, despite the marketers' opinions, single mode entities. One can be privately looking for bare boobs at 10 PM, even though at 6 PM, in the company of a wide eyed 3 year old, you were looking for pooh bear. Same computer, same account, but not at ALL the same marketing opportunity.

Yeah tell me another lie...

[blahplusplus]

It's very trivial to discover who people are, especially if you're combing and data mining their email for details to build reports to give to advertisers. Not only that, it's trivially simpler to correlate who people are with email and their IP addresses. So much private information passes through the email system, I would not be surprised if their are entire databases decribing everything about a person, their interests and their life that they have revealed through public email system to private friends, lovers and colleagues over the internet.

You cannot have privacy in a modern economy everyone leaves breadcrumbs everywhere by interacting with businesses.

Re:Fish are the town, people are the barrel man.

[Jason Earl]

I've never understood this myself. Microsoft and friends are going to push ads at us either way, I would just as soon see ads for stuff that I am actually interested in. When I go to a store and the salesman knows me well enough to actually be helpful I chalk that up to good service. Why should a website be any different?

I think that the real problem is that a lot of slashdotters don't like the picture that the sum of their online information paints about them. If you don't like the picture that your online experience paints of you, then you might want to reconsider how you act while online.

Ads are good.. sometimes

[WPIDalamar]

Ad's aren't annoying in themselves, ad's you don't care about are annoying.

If you happen to see an ad that tells you about something you're interested in, that's a good thing for you and for the marketer and things like this just make that more likely.

Re:Hmmm

[Achromatic1978]

Gmail presents you with ads based on the content of the page you are *currently* looking at. It does not rely on any personal information about you. It sounds like what Microsoft is doing is identifying who are every time you use any of their web services and building up a persistent personal profile of what you are interested in.

You keep on believing that Gmail does no such thing. As previously pointed out, even their privacy policy says different. Signed up for Orkut? With all your profile data there? Guess what, "Google uses personal information provided when you register for any Google service..."

So, again, I'm confused, what's the difference, other than "Most slashdotters make brownnosers look amateur with their efforts to worship the ground Google walks on"?