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IPFS News Link • Internet

Google to pay users to browse - so the search giant can watch every link they click

• www.dailymail.co.uk

Google is to pay computer users to browse the web so the search giant watches every link they click.

'Panelists' in the new Google Screenwise programme will be paid up to $25 in Amazon gift cards.

The payments offer an insight into how much web users' private data - usually harvested by giants such as Facebook and Google without payment - is worth. 

Users have to download a browser extension, which allows Google to monitor which sites they visit and how they use them.

Popular blog Search Engine Land said, 'The timing of this program seems odd, especially considering the backlash that Google has faced over the upcoming changes to its privacy policy.'

'Even though this Screenwise program is completely opt-in, some critics are bound to question why Google needs more data about web searchers and the websites they visit.'

 

2 Comments in Response to

Comment by Anonymous
Entered on:

Apparently they are already doing something along that mode as I was on shopping on the Tommy Bahama site and another site and all I see now popping up are Tommy Bahama links, pictures of things I was looking at and clicking on!  Its so creepy!  I feel like I am being stalked on my own computer!  So if you dare shop on line, prepare to see those ads, those photographs follow you around for a while. 

Imagine what the cameras on the roads could do for the personal injury lawyers... 

Comment by janeben
Entered on:

Thanks for the update. Two shopping malls were forced to scuttle plans to track shopper's activity via their cell phones last November. It is only the most recent example of big business doing high-tech snooping in order to get useful marketing demographics. Now Google has decided to put an open face on the endeavor and ask customers to surrender their privacy voluntarily. And it will even pay those customers, but not a whole lot. Check this out: Google Screenwise pays to spy on you. Just click the link for the details.

 



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