Apple Patents Polluting Facebook, Google Profiles

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.'"

So Apple

[MitchDev]

has a patent for lying and fooling people?

Makes Sense Now

[Anonymous Coward]

So yesterday, we see how Steve Jobs wanted all of Google's products to be integrated with Google+, presumably so that they could make things more relevant through social interactions. Then today comes the Apple patent for polluting a social profile and making that information useless. I guess his strategy of "going thermonuclear war" is still alive...

Re:So Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

And they're terrorists! Who else would want to evade profiling?

Re:So Apple

[dc29A]

I claim prior art circa 1996. My real name is not Pig Benis. I don't live in Fucking, Austria neither.

Re:So Apple

[Pf0tzenpfritz]

We know who you are. Very funny alias, Mr Willy Ficken from Petting, Germany...