It’s my birthday today, which you might know had you seen the 3,000 posts to my Facebook wall. OK, I exaggerate, but you get the picture. So you might say I was feeling pretty good until I went to Google to do a search. Up pops a Google “doodle” that clearly is a birthday greeting (see pic). And yes, clicking on it led me to my own Google profile page.
Has it really come to this, where now we have software wishing us a happy birthday? This got me thinking about when personalization, which generally I consider a Good Thing, crosses the line and becomes downright creepy. Just how much do we want Amazon or Apple or Microsoft or Google or Twitter or Facebook to tailor our interaction based on an increasingly large set of data that has been gathered about us?
This data includes what we have purchased, what we have searched for, what we have clicked on, commented on, etc. Basically virtually anything you do online now is known by someone. Or, more accurately, by some bit of software somewhere. And what that software does with that information is increasingly tailored to what it knows about us.
Call me old-fashioned, but I find that creepy.
No related posts.
This is exactly why I give my birthdate as April 1st any time that field is required.
If enough people give April Fools Day as their birthday and 867-5309 as their phone number, maybe someone will eventually take the hint. Not likely, but at least I don’t get ads texted to my phone.
Why don’t more people realize that personalized ads are still ads, only even more likely to separate you from your money. What consumer can possibly see that as a good thing?
I find it creepy that people give out their true personal information so willingly.
You don’t have to sign in to Google in order to search or stay signed in to Facebook/Twitter/email/whatever. It does take a small effort to keep your cookies and temp files cleaned out of your computer and yes, Google does try to learn your search patterns even if you don’t sign in, but if you don’t want your computer storing all your personal info across all platforms, then take a few minutes and officially sign out when you’re done with a site and empty out your cookies and temp files once in a while.
People that are still afraid to give out their true information on the Internet are the ones about to get left behind. It’s like people not getting a phone 30-40 years ago, because they did not want their name in a phone book. It will feel like such a primitive mindset in another ten years if it does not already feel that way now.
I agree with jmb and Marcie, I don’t find it creepy what google/facebook/ et al do with the data. That’s precisely why they collect it. I find it creepy that people give them that data.
As I commented on Google+ when Roy initially posted about his creeped-out reaction, you can turn off personalization of search results in Google just by adding &pws=0 to the end of the URL. That way, when you do a vanity search, you can see how you _really_ rank
Dan: Thanks, it appears that my name is fairly unique, as I still rank high in Google searches on my name after turning personalization off: http://bit.ly/qHZTcs
Only in the U.S., apparently:
http://www.192.com/atoz/people/tennant/roy/
Relatives?
[...] The Line Between Personalization and Creepy [...]