IP: more on user tracking in search engines

[Dave Farber <farber@cis.upenn.edu>]

Date: 30 Apr 1999 13:52:38 -0400 
From: colonel@monmouth.com (Col. G. L. Sicherman) 
Subject: Re: What's DejaNews up to? (Smith, RISKS-20.34)

I don't know what commercial advantages DejaNews may gain by tracking 
clicks, but this can be helpful to users of any search engine. For 
example, consider a search on
bambi book children
The first two entries on the list are:
1. Book exotic dancer Bambi for your next stag party! Not suitable 
for children. ...
2. Bambi, by Felix Salten, is a wonderful book for children. Here's 
how to order: ...
Most people will select item 2. Knowing this, the search engine will 
start presenting item 2 at the head of the list. It's an automatic 
way to make search engines more helpful--at the risk of making it 
harder to find things that most people don't want.
Col. G. L. Sicherman web: <http://www.monmouth.com/~colonel/> 
work: sicherman@lucent.com home: colonel@mail.monmouth.com
[... and they are easily Bambioozled. PGN]
------------------------------
Date: 29 Apr 1999 14:30:37 -0400 
From: Matt Curtin <cmcurtin@interhack.net> 
Subject: RISKS of the net's success... (Re: DejaNews, Smith, RISKS 20.34)
As noted, this business of tracking links is not new. DejaNews and HotBot 
aren't the only ones doing this, either.
In other strange-but-true news, after releasing a report that was generally 
critical of Netscape's implementation of the "Smart Browsing" feature, we 
discovered that that very feature was claiming our report is "related" to 
the Unabomber Manifesto. A good summary of this was covered in Lauren 
Weinstein's PRIVACY Forum Digest 08.06[1]. It was also reported that 
AltaVista is preparing to give preferential treatment in search results to 
those who pay for their listings. [In Lauren's PRIVACY item, he noted that 
AltaVista says that those listings will be marked as having been paid for. 
PGN]
Lauren made a really interesting point in the PRIVACY Forum Digest that 
really seems to cut through all of the noise around these annoyances and 
problems, getting to the larger problem, that is the risks associated with 
the Internet's success. He wrote:
It's of enough concern when we learn that major search engines 
(e.g. AltaVista) are about to start selling search result 
placements. It's of equal concern if users need to be worried 
that other search results, returned by other search engines, might 
potentially be skewed by unobvious forces not related to an 
unbiased analysis of the sites in question, even if monetary 
considerations are not the factor involved.
If search engines begin to lose the trust of their users, one of 
the net's most powerful category of tools may be reduced to 
nothing more than automated pitchmen using every means possible, 
no matter how biased, to try pull the yokels into the tent. In 
that case, it will not only be a serious loss for us all, but will 
also create the potential for a sort of "information pollution" on 
a scale we've never seen before.
Is it possible that the success of the net will lead to its own demise 
from the perspective of a useful resource that serves its end users?
[1] http://www.vortex.com/privacy/priv.08.06
Matt Curtin cmcurtin@interhack.net http://www.interhack.net/people/cmcurtin/