Google is gearing up to spy on your web surfing habits so it can sell ads around what you’ve looked at over time, rather than the single page you’re viewing. It’s called behavioral targeting, and is sure to spark a new wave of privacy worries. Big brother or big bother over nothing? Read on for all the info.
We’ve seen targeted advertising based on browsing habits before – Phorm caused an uproar when it started talks with British ISPs to do something similar – but now the world’s biggest web advertising network, Google, is launching a new scheme to sell ads the same way, calling it Interest-Based Advertising.
Previously, Google would tailor ads based on past searches, but now Google will be able to see the sites you’re looking at and target ads based on your browsing too. It’s a bit creepy, isn’t it?
Google’s scheme will let you tailor your preferences, through 30 categories with around 600 sub-categories, but what’s got us worried is that the Google scheme will only be opt-out rather than opt-in. And no matter how much Google protests otherwise, there will be a large audience left unaware of the implications or how to turn it off.
The Google behavioral targeting scheme is in closed beta testing at the moment, but we’ll let you know when Google announces anything more.
Out TBC | £TBC | Google (Via search engine land)
