Apple Patents Polluting Facebook, Google Profiles 142
theodp writes "On Tuesday, the USPTO granted Apple an odd patent on Techniques to Pollute Electronic Profiling, which presumably might concern the targeted ad revenue-hungry folks at Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn (and their investors). The patent, apparently assigned to Apple from Novell, is designed to thwart 'dataveillance techniques from automated Litter Brothers,' including lawful targeted and aggressive marketing tactics. Creating cloned identities that are 'intentionally populated with divergent information [e,g., fake phone numbers, email accounts, credit or debit card accounts],' explains the patent, 'circumvents the reliability and usefulness of dataveillance used by network eavesdroppers and effectively provides greater privacy over the network to principals.'"
I don't know if evil or good. (Score:5, Interesting)
Makes me wonder if this is evil or good.
Evil because it's fucking with Google. This is squarely a jab to google's breadbasket. If WWDC wasn't a big "fuck you" to google, this certainly is.
Good because this is anonymity to the next level. Defeating snooping from big business to try to sell us shit we don't need.
Evil though because this idea should belong to everyone.
TBH, I'm surprised the EFF didn't figure this one out sooner.
Just in time (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18506255 [bbc.co.uk]
Prior Art. (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been doing this for 15 years now, ever since my first spam email lured me to my first spam site.
I own several domains and give different emails; faked whenever I don't care if I never hear from the admen again.
I invent (fictitious, but coherent) persona's for myself when answering marketeers dumb questions. I regularly complete 'Can we tediously interrupt you to gather marketing info' wonkery with entirely faked data. If I care about a website, or think a company is treating me properly, then I help them help me by being broadly honest, all others get systematically and deliberately misinformed.
My 2 point plan; which I heartily recommend:
1) Reward honesty with honesty,
2) Reward spin with spin.
And if any marketeers read this, hahaha, spin on it.
(PS: I know, from colleagues and friends, that I am not alone in doing this.)
Re:I don't know if evil or good. (Score:4, Interesting)
While Google undoubtedly does some evil, the good they do outweighs it in my opinion.
I was reading their privacy/censorship report yesterday and thinking how nice it would be if Apple, FB, MS, Twitter, Linkedin, etc. all did the same.
Indeed, on the same day that Google was publicising and enumerating how much governments intrude on Privacy; the US government was refusing to say, even in broad numbers, how many US citizens enjoyed a NSA snoop session recently.