This may be news to some, but companies like Facebook and Google collect and store information for future use.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently made the bold prediction that some young people will have to change their identities to escape documented histories on social-networking sites like Facebook. If you do not want to be one of the people that fulfill this prediction, you will follow my first rule for preserving an identity and peace of mind on the Internet: assume everything you do is public. While this is not even close to the truth, operating under this default will spare you the trouble of trying to understand the complex and numerous privacy policy agreements from companies online.
But even if you follow this all-is-public rule your identity still may be threatened. A more serious and deeper type of identity is threatened by Internet ads on Google and Facebook than by the superficial reputation type of identity Schmidt was talking about. At this time, Google's three billion daily searches are used to improve both the efficiency of the search engine and the efficiency of the advertisements. With Google's already lightning-fast search speed being untouchable, it appears that the real motivation for collecting and storing personalized information is for improved, behaviorally directed ads online.
That is not necessarily a good thing. Recently I was house-sitting and slept on one of those tempurpedic mattresses. I found the mattress incredibly comfortable and decided to look up the price of one on Google. The 0.09-second Google search gave me the answer while also providing the basis for Google's directed advertisements toward me: for the next two weeks almost all of the Google ads were for tempurpedic mattresses.
The second rule of keeping your identity and peace of mind is to understand how and why ads are directed at you. This second rule is the first half of preserving a deeper sense of identity and self. Once ads and the techniques they employ become subject to analysis, the relationship between the marketer and the audience changes. To understand behavioral advertising on Google, one can search "Google Ad Preferences" and find a link where interest categories based on your personal search information can be found. For instance, I assume that based on my listening to Saul Williams' poetry and music online, my browser’s ad preferences categorized me into "arts and entertainment: music and audio: urban and hip-hop." On this Google page, individuals can add and delete interests as well as opt out entirely from behavioral tracking. Opting out may be good for some, but by no means in doing so should people be lured into a false sense of privacy and forget the first all-is-public rule — there are still many other websites that collect data.
The third and final rule to preserve identity and peace of mind on the Internet is the most important and difficult to follow: determine what you really like. Whether it be in response to Google ads or Facebook suggesting what you “like,” one more association made by online companies based on personal information you provide is one less than we make on our own.
Behaviorally directed ads and the profiling behind them threaten individual and cultural identity. Saul Williams is more than "arts and entertainment: music and audio: urban and hip-hop." I am more than my computer-generated interests, and I hope you are too.
Reach Dan at djgarry@asu.edu
