I have a fascinated/disgusted relationship with targeted advertisements. On one hand, I’ve seen enough Playtex commercials in my lifetime that I could probably draw you their logo from memory, and I’ve never been in the position to decide, “should I buy the Playtex version, or a different brand?” All those ads in my face have been a complete waste of my time, and the advertiser’s dollars. So, I think it would be really neat if I only saw advertisements that would interest me.
On the other hand, even though I’m blessed with A.D.D. and therefore daydream my way through most ads, I’ve read enough studies about how ads work, and I know that in some cases I’m more likely to buy a brand I’ve heard of. In other cases, a simple Google search will suffice, and the recommendation from people I trust is worth more than a hundred well-produced ads.
Since the seminal work on the subject—Minority Report—came out in theaters, I’ve been waiting to see just how close we’ll get to individually-targeted ads. And this morning I see that Germany is beginning to place video cameras inside of street-level billboards, designed to recognize people’s emotional reaction to specific ads. If the advertisers sees that more people are smiling, or at least interested, than sneering, they’ll feel encouraged to keep the ad going.
Granted, this is quite far from a commercial that speaks to you or knows your habits, as in “Hey, Bill Braskey, it’s been 8 days since your last vanilla latté. Don’t you think you deserve one?” And I’m thankful for that. At present, I don’t feel like an advertisement that judges my emotional state is an invasion of privacy, but if they start to recognize my identity, I certainly will.
We do, however, already see ads based on our habits. Google and its advertising partners have the ability to show you ads that other visitors won’t see, because your Internet browsing habits are not exactly private. They call it “interest-based advertising”, and because Google is Google, they were very open and up-front about it, and have provided permanent methods for anybody to opt-out of the program.
Billboards shouting out your name aren’t a reality yet for a couple important reasons: 1) recognizing an individual face isn’t foolproof yet, and 2) advertisers don’t have access to a database of, say, driver’s license photos. Although, there may be a way around that last requirement, if Facebook starts selling access to names tagged in photos. In any event, you can rest assured that we’ll keep on top of this for you and help you protect your brain.
If you’re an AAA member in California, Hawaii, New Mexico or Texas, you’re suddenly eligible for a free credit monitoring service, provided by Experian.
While I was looking through the fine print (a free service for you provided by ConsumerismCommentary.com), I found this, which gave me pause:
You are receiving a complimentary credit monitoring membership. Your membership is effective for the period disclosed to you when you received your activation code. Should you choose to discontinue your membership for any reason before expiration of the then applicable membership term for which you are entitled, you may cancel your membership by calling the toll-free number listed on this Web Site or the toll-free number listed in the welcome materials sent to you. Please be aware that if, at the end of your promotional membership, you decide to continue your membership for a monthly/annual fee, you will have an opportunity to re-enroll at a separate website with different Terms and Conditions.
But the e-mail I got from AAA stated:
This benefit is complimentary to AAA members—there are no hidden fees or charges. You won’t be asked to provide any payment information when you sign up.
There was an offer along the way to see my credit score for $5, but I’m happily using the free CreditKarma service for that.
When it was all done, there was a big button labeled “View Credit Report”, which isn’t the same as “identity theft monitoring”, but for all of our sakes, I clicked it. Thankfully, there was a menu option (all the way at the top, very small font) for “Credit Monitoring”. Here’s what you actually get:
Daily Monitoring of your Experian Credit Report
Email Alerts of key changes to your Experian Credit Report
Dedicated Representatives for Identity Theft Victims
Experian Credit Report
I love e-mail alerts, so I’ll be keeping this on for a while, and I’ll report back on its usefulness.
Summertime is traditionally when most people take their annual vacations, and since the social media explosion, more aspects of a given person’s vacation will end up as photos on Flickr, or “wish you were here” messages on Facebook.
“We had mentioned that we were going out of town for an extended period and even Twittered about the trip as we drove for three days,” he told an Arizona television station. While he was gone, video editing equipment was stolen from his home.
The Subtleties
My first reaction was to assume that the man in the story has some people following him on Twitter who aren’t exactly friendly. But then I remembered that anybody can do a search on Twitter for a phrase like “vacation” and find results like these:
Then, if you can cross-reference a likely victim with their address found online, and you have criminal tendencies, then you know which house to burglarize.
Additionally, many Twitter apps (and possibly for other services) have the option of finding your current location and looking nearby for specific criteria.
The Solution(s)
Take an inventory of which of your information can be found online easily. Some starting points:
Is your username the same as your real name?
Are you and your address listed in the phone book?
Does your wireless router know where it’s located? Does it broadcast that location?
Is your profile public? Do you want to keep it that way?
Are you on LinkedIn? How much of that profile is public?
and so on…
You may decide that a simple solution would be to keep the vacation secret until you get home, but remember, even if you decide to avoid the magic word “vacation” in your own online updates, your friends may inadvertently be helping potential burglars:
Håkan Djuphammar, VP of Systems Architecture for Ericsson, made a prediction recently that all new mobile phones sold after Summer 2010 would have two-way RFID chips in them that would allow them to act as a tag or a reader.
If what you just read sounds like technobabble, watch this short news excerpt to get up to speed. Even if you’re not interested in technology, you should learn about the possibilities and the dangers of RFID:
Back to the mobile phone: yes, it would be perfectly easy for all mobile phones on the planet to have an RFID tag/scanner in them. The possibilities for making use of RFID, like the numbering scheme itself, are practically endless. People in Asia use their mobile phones to buy drinks from vending machines all the time, and according to Djuphammar:
the chip might also be used by credit card companies to track the location of cardholders to cut down on fraud.
So, the myriad of privacy concerns aside, does this mean I won’t be able to use my credit card if I leave my phone at home?
RFID doesn’t inherently scare me. I already use one in the keyfob for my car when unlocking the door and starting the engine. It raises ethical concerns, and I think we should plan our next moves carefully. We don’t have a great history of moving carefully forward (people still drive without seatbelts all the time), which is one of the reasons I’m hoping you’ll educate yourself and your friends about this starting today.
If you have the means and the time, I highly recommend the book Everyware: the dawning age of ubiquitous computing, which not only details many possibilities for taking advantage of RFID, it also contains a great starting point for a positively ethical “post-PC” future (including some really neat new icons).
Most of the time when you hear the term “facial recognition,” it’s used by people trying to attract you to a new digital camera, or software, or a plugin for Facebook.
On an individual level, it’s little more than a way to help your camera focus, or group and search your photos. But if you’re using it on a larger group level, you can make it do all sorts of nifty, and possibly dangerous, things.
Airports are trying to use it to catch suspicious people when they appear in huge crowds. It shouldn’t shock you if I say that airports detain many people every week for doing nothing wrong. I’m a little worried that this would lead to even more false alarms.
YouTube has got a way to detect celebrity faces in their videos, which can help them, among other things, find videos that are breaking copyright law. There’s no reason, however, that it can’t also learn your face, and find you in other videos it has indexed.
Convenience
Some Windows-only laptops are using it to bypass the need for a startup password. I’m eagerly looking forward to the day when it might replace all my passwords, but there are a few kinks to work out first: most importantly, the Internet is not particularly secure, and I wouldn’t want just anybody to be able to activate my computer’s camera and look around. It’d have to be more of a system where, say, the bank’s Web site asks the local machine, “are you sure it’s really him?” and my computer replies Yes or No.
But if we could get that to work, I’d be a much happier man. I sit down, I’m logged in. I walk away, I’m logged out. Instantaneous, foolproof (?) security.
Toshiba has found a way to make changing the radio station in your car as easy as blinking your eye.
That had better not be the trigger for changing the music. We, as a people, do a lot of blinking.
Beyond the Face
Microsoft is wanting to combine face recognition with voice recognition and movement tracking (and maybe more) with their new Project Natal. I am so far a big fan of the XBox experience, even if Windows drives me batty, so I have high hopes for this. I can’t help but think that background noises, like a dog barking, will cause a significant amount of trouble.
Conclusion
My American dream relies heavily on the notion of being able to go through an entire work week without anything in my pockets, or hanging off my belt. If facial recognition can be proven to be more than, say, 99% effective, sign me up.
But it also depends on a lot of trust in the authorities we place in power. I’ve seen corrupt behavior. You probably have, too. Do you imagine these technologies will help or hurt?
LeanLifeCoach: In the end how much will the IRS really get; 10% maybe 20% of all this money? And how much will we spend collectively in actual dollars and... on Enforcing Tax Laws Works. Go Figure.
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Since the seminal work on the subject—Minority Report—came out in theaters, I’ve been waiting to see just how close we’ll get to individually-targeted ads. And this morning I see that Germany is beginning to place video cameras inside of street-level billboards, designed to recognize people’s emotional reaction to specific ads. If the advertisers sees that more people are smiling, or at least interested, than sneering, they’ll feel encouraged to keep the ad going.
