
Yahoo And Google Now Let You Opt Out Of Ads (Because It’s Better Than Letting You Opt In) - drm237
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/08/yahoo-and-google-now-let-you-opt-out-of-ads-because-its-better-than-letting-you-opt-in/
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sysop073
As notauser says, this title sucks, it's about targeted ads. I don't
understand why people are so against targeted ads. These companies are going
to collect information about you either way, it's (at least for the moment)
not illegal, so why shouldn't they use that information to give you ads that
don't suck? If Digg wants to determine that I've never clicked on a Snorg tees
ad even though they've shown me 10,000 of them and conclude that maybe they
should stop showing them, that sounds like a win for me, Digg and the Snorg
tees people that are paying for me to see an ad I will never click. Now I can
see an ad I might actually be interested in, Digg can charge more for
advertising, and the ad providers aren't throwing their money away

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litewulf
I had a rather amusing conversation with my coworker today about this. I think
that companies should not collect that kind of data, despite the benefit in
terms of improved products (personalized search, ads that don't suck,
whatever), whereas his basic attitude was "I'm not doing anything illegal,
they're not doing anything illegal, so why not?"

While I would not mind being shown ads I care about, I worry about the cost. I
don't want companies to be able to share detailed click trails and be able to
produce in depth biographies because of the potential for abuse, be it
governmental, corporate or "hm I wonder what I can find out about that girl I
met yesterday".

PS: as an addendum, I know people with Google log access, and while it's less
scary than it sounds, I know there are "tons" of people with such access...
and counterparts at other companies. I don't know if I can trust _all_ those
people with knowing when I get funny rashes or whatever.

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sysop073
I don't like it either, but if they're going to do it either way I would
rather at least get some benefit out of it

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notauser
Very misleading headline - this is not opting out of ads, it is opting out of
cross-site tracking. (By having an opt-out cookie set.)

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vaksel
Everyone should just install Ad Block

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aardvarkious
The issue with targeted ads isn't the targeted ads, but the information
collected and stored to generate them. AFAIK, Ad Block does nothing to help
with this. Also notice that opting out likely doesn't help either.

