Big G's New Advertising

If you have Big G's AdSense on a website, you probably received an email about their new interest-based advertising which launches April 8, 2009. They admonished all of us to change the privacy policy on our sites to warn visitors that they would be shown ads based upon the visitor's previous Internet cruising.

Privacy Concerns

I think this is a big invasion of privacy. I mean where you choose to cruise should be your business. If you visit ladies' lingerie, I don't want ads for ladies' lingerie popping up on my blogs. I take pains to make sure the content on this blog is related to writing or to my writing life. I would never write about ladies' lingerie, except perhaps as the example herein, so I don't want ads for it or Boston Red Sox souvenirs or Michael Jackson concert tickets or God knows what, popping up here.

No Way Out

I opted out of having user-interest-based ads appear. I discovered that if a visitor to Sling Words has interacted with an advertiser, ads targeted to that site will still appear in the AdSense here.

Only Recourse

I gave a lot of thought to this situation. I decided that the pennies I earn from AdSense aren't worth another blow against the right to privacy. Therefore, I will be removing AdSense from this blog before April 1.

Big Brother isn't just watching you. He's keeping more invasive computer statistics about you than you ever suspected. If you don't like it, there's little you can do if you want to continue using the Internet. Unless you use an anonymizer which I suspect more people will begin to use.

Takeaway Truth

Our right to privacy is as endangered as copyright protection.