pouët.net

Yes, Google+ is exactly that.

Their license agreement / privacy statement looks far more reasonable than Facebook's tho. Pretty much details how they put you into statistics and sell those to advertisers but let you retain most of you righhts otherwise, especially copyright. Or at least they say so.

for me, Barbie dolls ARE porn.

and the online personality profiling stuff is scary. it's not paranoia as some seem to think. there's a lot of commercial interest in linking stable internet id's and browsing habits to identifiable individuals. think how that could progress in the future as that information is sold to other people keen to make judgements on your "personality".

i'm not thinking necessarily of KGB style government persecution. think how employment agencies (fe) could use that information and pass it on to potential employers. you apply for that job and - as part of the recruitment process - the employer seeks an openly purchasable "personality profile" based on your online activity. and yes, their are companies keen to offer these services, once it becomes socially acceptable for our information to be used in this way. social networking sites (such as Facebook) and people's general careless ignorance is one step in that direction.

that's why we have to keep moaning and protesting to keep possetion (as far as possible) of our own data. not just say "oh well, i have nothing to hide". we all have stuff we'd rather others didn't use to weave together inaccurate snap judgements on "who we are".

gargaj: nasty, but it shows what can happen. Whatever you post on these sites can be kept for a long, long time, and governments can and do change.

But Brazil is a good movie... :)

if advertisers profile me based on the lunacy i talk about on the intarwebs, they'll clearly offer me the wrong products anyway! oooh, god i love parsnips!

rär: that's what i meant.

Have none of you guys ever heard of proxies, tor or throw-away accounts?

yes, but what the hell is the point of doing that to use your own account on a social network? Anonymous, untraceable connections to a website that has your name, photograph, list of friends + relatives etc.? :D

Or do you have a completely invented online personality with no connection to your real self? And if so, is it a girl?

Look me up anytime big-boy ;-)

Personally I'm glad for the profiling. I would much rather see adverts for cheap hard drives or video cards or something than shit I would NEVER be interested in like "lose weight with this one weird old tip discovered by a mom" or holistic crystals or female hygiene products (cue jokes here). Seriously, advertising used to actively piss me off 10 years ago. It's somewhat better now.

Don't like ads? Don't use internet. Have privacy concerns? Don't use facebook or google+. This isn't rocket science.

++ for not using facebook/google+
But you could of course use firefox with adbolck+ &/or noscript? I mean really these days most browsers ship with adblockers. And of course the hosts file is your friend!

you could also simply ignore the ads. that's what i do.

I use adblock too. There's another problem with adverts: now and then an advertising server gets hacked, and they start serving poisoned adverts on normally trustable sites (happened to the london stock exchange website not long ago!)

The downside is that you're denying income to lots of websites you use and like, and would normally want to support :(

The other problem with ads is that they take up bandwidth and computer resources and that is not so easy to ignore. I use adblock and flashblock and I couldn't imagine browsing without that...

Flashblock is pretty much essential anyway, because flash is such a major security liability.

And adblock.. even if you don't mind the adverts and want to support the sites by showing them, there are still the huge, fullscreen, flashing, music playing, generally super irritating adverts that basically shout "FUCK YOU, YOU'RE NOT BLOCKING ME SO I'M GOING TO SHOVE MY PRODUCT IN YOUR FACE". They're reason enough to install adblock alone, and they're kind of ruining it for all the regular polite ads that just show some text and a small picture.