Interesting, but isn't this just another form of tracking? No matter what they call it, if your actions are being followed across multiple devices including games, isn't that another form of privacy invasion? Don't they think the government will look at this in the same light as cookies?

I didn't read the article, but my guess is that they want to store user information in the "cloud". Meaning less transparency for the user.

Google is similarly plotting its own cookie replacement, and others such as Facebook, Apple and Amazon are expected to pounce on the third-party cookie's vulnerability.

My guess is that these companies have already developed this technology and now need to motivate the public into accepting it, hence enlisting giants Facebook, Apple and Amazon to the fear mongering party.

My concern - the invasion of my privacy is worse than I think. I want specific details, of which none are shared.

consumers could give permission for its advertising use when opting in to a device's regular user agreement or terms of service

So if you want to use our services you must agree to abandoning your privacy? I don't think so.

Chips and bits, chiseling away "yourself", "who you are" as long as you want to use our devices, etc. Sadly, schools these last few decades have avoided reads of Heinlein, Asimov, Bradbury, etc... heck even Doc Smith warned of these invasive uber commercialities invading the "private space".

As that computer in the movie War Games once declared: The only winning move is not to play. How about a game of chess?"

Reality is these folks MUST track their sales and market share, to build upon that for world dominance (ie. market share). The shareholders demand that...

So if you want to use our services you must agree to abandoning your privacy? I don't think so.

The problem with that is that almost all will helplessly be quick to "TAP/TAB/CLICK" on: "I Agree"(tested on my cat(like)/canary(tweet)/hamster(ahhh just go with it, this dude is changing the mini dumpster every day anyway) this morning as a proof of concept).

_{Note: no sane animals were used in the test.}

It's always amusing when webmasters come out against tracking methods..... the very tracking used to help monetize our sites.

It's always amusing when webmasters come out against tracking methods..... the very tracking used to help monetize our sites.

Actually I was pretty content with the way it was first: Ads showing on the website that related to the content on the website.

Here's a good question...

If one's Internet activity is not illegal or subversive, why worry about it not being hidden?

And which activity is not recorded somewhere? Run Wireshark on your PC or look at the logs of any server.

Websites never needed cookies to track activity. In fact the cookie is only good for storing preferences. But the server can monitor and record absolutely everything by identifying your session. Cookies are only for small-fry... web designers without access to server resources.

If one's Internet activity is not illegal or subversive, why worry about it not being hidden?

Here's a good answer...

If we all think like that then we are allowing ourselves to be controlled. The new levels of paranoia being reached by government agencies is mind-numbing. It's reaching a point where they are in more need of psychiatric help than the disturbed "bad guys" they are trying to follow.

They are tagging us all collectively as "guilty of something but we just don't know what yet" so lets track their behaviour and blacklist them when they step outside the conventional box.

It's like the controlling influence the churches had in the dark ages. Yet today we're trying to crawl out from under that oppression. Imagine how much worst this electronic surveillance is becoming.

Innocent unsuspecting people, by simply chance association via a chain of hub and spoke email connections or trice removed hops of phone conversations are being flagged and having privacy violated for extended periods of time until they are "proven innocent".

I'll use myself as an example. Right now I'm developing a business website for a Muslim fellow. I've taken the time to get to know him a bit first to determine if I want to work with him (not because he's Muslim but because that's how I approach every new business prospect regardless of race, colour or creed). I communicate with him via his Yahoo! email address, via mobile phone and in person. So what happens to me if I've misjudged his character and he has a bit of a subversive mentality? Needless to say I'm most likely going to be suspected of being guilty of something too by mere association (especially considering my outspoken nature because I don't live in fear).

It's a very disheartening trend.

I was just introduced to Tor as a result of following and reading another article from another post here at WW. I've installed it and I'm going to examine it but wow I so wish it wasn't necessary. I long for the days of freedom we used to have. At the very least wars back then were mostly limited to battlefields, not brought right into people's homes.

Physiological warfare is no less damaging than shrapnel.

All this to sell a product or service by enhanced tracking methods that covert government operations then help themselves to?!

With each passing day I'm loosing my passion for the mind challenges of Internet Development that I used to enjoy. I no longer want to be associated with, by extension, electronic surveillance.

Mega corporations and their greed are very prominent contributors to this unhealthy trend.

I'm also now blacklisting Microsoft along with Google and Facebook. I know they are guilty of something that we just can't prove yet.

If one's Internet activity is not illegal or subversive, why worry about it not being hidden?

Indeed.

jecasc, we also had a much higher CPM/CPC back in the days before behavioral targeting/tracking. That may be coincidence, of course, but I often wonder if advertisers assume they have a complete picture when in fact they don't - that is, you may search on your phone but buy from your desktop, or search on your desktop but then buy at a store, etc. Tracking can't tell them that.

Also friends have complained to me that it's creepy if you're searching for dog food and then you go to a site about fashion and blam, there are dog food ads all over the fashion site. So I have to assume at least some of my site visitors are similarly creeped out, and that's not the negative experience I want them to have.

Unfortunately, advertisers pay even less for non-tracked ads than they do for tracked ones, so I put up with the tracking. But there is a part of me that thinks if tracking was legislated away, it might ultimately work out better for my business.

I long for the days of freedom we used to have.

What makes you think that it has changed over time at all? In fact today there are more and more free services available for creating false identities and anonynously spamming than ever before.

The only thing that has changed is that more people are whining about it. Now they can blog about it, tweet about and FB about it. Cookies and history have always been used for catering to "taste"... just like CSS is modified to suit screen size.

if you're searching for dog food and then you go to a site about fashion and blam, there are dog food ads all over the fashion site

There is not a lot different about this now and what it was like 10 years ago. What may have increased is the use of pachet-sniffing by the authorities to trigger alarms about persons and behaviour of interest.

In fact today there are more and more free services available for creating false identities and anonynously spamming than ever before.

I'm not speaking on behalf of tech people, the minority who have always known this, I'm speaking for the majority of the internet users who don't understand this stuff and therefore don't know how to protect themselves from it.

Cookies and history have always been used for catering to "taste"...

Sure as long as it's limited to a better user experience, that's what the technology should be for. But obviously these companies are no longer satisfied with user experience now they want to know if they ate corn for dinner yesterday. The article in the OP is about spanning it across all devices. There's no need to follow people from one device to another. That has nothing to do with user experience.

... just like CSS is modified to suit screen size.

That's really stretching it.

isn't this just another form of tracking? No matter what they call it

:o) ... sums it up for me.

If any company wants more persistent tracking to avoid scenarios where cookies were deleted, or multiple devices causing confusion... then they should require their users to log in.

Not sure why 3rd party cookies are an issue with phones mind you.

then they should require their users to log in

Much of this is coming from a "user" opinion. But in most cases the "operator's" opinion will be "you enter and abide by my rules or not at all". Otherwise that is like expecting to visit a shop but the video surveillance must be turned off, which of course will leave it exposed to shoplifters.

I see the extremes of this optionion. One is that users want absolute privacy which unfortunately will enable miscreants to ply their trade. As usual there is an idiot factor amongst this lot that simply fights anything and everything but is too stupid too realise that anarchy does not work. Then there are those on the other extreme and we have a lot of customers like this... not only do they want full tracking but they also want sections of their content locked down so that visitors must install special plugins to view it.

Of course every visitor has the choice... if they don't like it then you can guess the options.

But in most cases the "operator's" opinion will be "you enter and abide by my rules or not at all". Otherwise that is like expecting to visit a shop but the video surveillance must be turned off, which of course will leave it exposed to shoplifters.

Huh?

I don't care if shop owners follow me around the store with their eyes in the sky. It's also a nuisance to have them check my receipt and bag as I'm exiting the store, but I don't make a fuss about it. I just don't want them placing tracking and profiling devices and/or code in the product, the paid-for-product that I buy, which becomes my private property to take home with me.

One is that users want absolute privacy which unfortunately will enable miscreants to ply their trade.

Criminals and misfits have never been, and will never be, the ones who pay the price of lost freedom. It's the average Joe who suffers.

As usual there is an idiot factor amongst this lot that simply fights anything and everything but is too stupid too realise that anarchy does not work.

Wow. How did we every manage to get through the decades of the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s without anarchy ruling the nest. Just lucky I guess. Good thing we have these corporations, and their backroom buddies, stepping up to the plate now to protect us.

Silly me. I guess I should be grateful huh?

I should also add to the above, in your example, it's in fact the corporations and the government agencies that are the shoplifters. Stealing our right to privacy.

Isn't tracking more analagous to the shop somehow tracking what you do after leaving the store, going home, having some dinner, maybe enjoying some private time, going to bed, getting up for work the next morning... ?

Keyword targeted advertising did not generate the sort of "creepy" complaints behavioral targeting does. Supposedly it didn't generate as good an ROI either, but if that's true, why have CPM rates fallen?

It's not as if we have nothing to fall back on if behavioral tracking falls apart. One of the big truisms about advertising is that it's worth what you can talk a buyer into paying, period. The TV ratings agencies, for example, produce numbers which are frequently not that better than ones we might make up - and may be more misleading. But it doesn't matter because no one has EVER really gotten into the heads of the consumers - advertisers just want to BELIEVE they have. So if behavioral tracking goes away, it won't matter. There will be other ways to convince ad buyers that the Emperor's new robe is absolutely smashing, and they'll keep forking out the money and no one will ever really fully understand what works.

I don't see a problem with tracking at all. Perhaps more people should relise that it has always been going on and to wake up to the fact that you are what you download. If you vists a site and lokked at cammeras and then returned a coule weeks later, so what if the emphisis of ads becomes cameras.

The only way this can ever be a inconvenience is like when sharing a computer with a partner and they start wondering whay all the ads are about #*$! :-)

Otherwise, get real. I have surfed the web for 15+ years and have never been naive to think that it's private and that no-one can read a log somehere to see exactly where I have been and what I have downloaded. Nothing has changed... just more whingers whining about it.

... just more whingers whining about it.

Please define "whingers whining" as it relates to objection about what is being presented in the OP.

I don't see a problem with tracking at all.

This isn't about tracking. It's about profiling. There is a major difference between the two streams.

I track website visitors via Piwik on one of my sites. The reason is simple, I need to understand interaction to better tune the site for their benefit, the "user experience".

By default Piwik honours "Do Not Track", I leave it in place to honour a vistor's right to not be tracked. Their right to privacy trumps my need to understand interaction even if I know it will result in a better user experience.

If I took it further and attempted to then track a visitor across any internet connected device unrelated to a particular website by assigning a visitor a unique ID of some sort it would no longer be for their benefit -- it would be for my own unscrupulous reasons. That's profiling for commercial purposes (and whatever else is being done with such collected data these days).

Referring back to the OP how can a user experience on any one of microsoft's websites be related to use of an xbox for gaming, or any of their other unnamed services briefly mentioned?

I find it interesting that this sudden change in ethical direction from microsoft coincides with the departure of Steve Balmer. Sure one could say that their sales have been slumping under his watch but I say they are actually a victim of their own successful OS with very little need to upgrade recently. Windows 7 is good. So is the evolution of hardware. Combined it has lead to an decreased need to upgrade for the foreseeable future.

Microsoft has had it's share of lumps and black eyes in the public over the years, there's no denying that. But at least in recent years they regained my trust and respect because they had clearly changed course. Until now that is, with this new revelation. Kinda makes me wonder if Steve Balmer was resisting internal demands to throw all caution to the wind and jump on the train of ethics heading to hell. Maybe he couldn't bring himself to that point. We can never know enough about internal politics within corporations who put profit ahead of human decency.

... just more whingers whining about it.

And a reminder...please define "whingers whining" as it realates to objection about what is being presented in the OP.

I would enjoy a healthy debate. I'll go sharpen my pencils while I'm waiting.