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| BadPhorm - When good ISPs go bad! :: Forums :: Privacy in an Electronic Age :: DPI Technology |
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| getinvisiblehand | ||
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Moderators: Jim Murray, narcosis, felixcatuk, Sammy, revrob
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| Author | Post | ||
| madslug |
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 Registered Member #266 Joined: Tue Apr 01 2008, 01:11PMPosts: 808 | Spotted this in a newsletter. "InvisibleHand - www.getinvisiblehand.com - gets you the lowest price on shopping, flights, hotels & rental cars. Automatically. InvisibleHand shows a discreet notification when there are lower prices available on the product, flight, hotel or rental car you're shopping for. It gives you a link directly to the lowest price." Another traffic data harvester "InvisibleHand does not collect any personally identifiable information. It does not store IP addresses and it does not track individual user browsing behaviour. To provide the price notifications, it records the retailer product page URLs which have been browsed, but it does not collect any information about who browsed those pages. No URLs are collected for sites other than retailers and travel sites. It's impossible for us to identify who has browsed products, and we do not collect any personal or demographic information about our users." The copyright suggests that the add-on is being marketed by www.forward.co.uk ... and they have a uswitch email address for PR. Seems they bought the website. Anyone have any idea whether it is just an affiliate widget stealing customers or a piece of spyware? Is there a difference? | ||
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| PingusPeriratus |
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 Registered Member #657 Joined: Fri May 01 2009, 06:32PMPosts: 814 | I think they are playing with words. All the stuff they are saying they dont collect must pass thru the system first. This sounds like TalkTalks url stripping claim. They must have a list to compare site addresses to in order to discard what they don't want. Once again we only have their word they dont keep anything else. Follow the money, if it's free to use who's paying and what for? | ||
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| madslug |
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| Registered Member #266 Joined: Tue Apr 01 2008, 01:11PMPosts: 808 | It is part of an ad network, so they get a commission for anything you click on. Not much different from any other spyware that gets added as a toolbar, etc. | ||
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| Peter N |
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  Registered Member #507 Joined: Wed Jul 30 2008, 02:08PMPosts: 33 | If we take their word regarding the type and volume of data they do keep and process - and there's no reason not to (at the moment) -I actually can't see any problem and would even go so far as to applaud their efforts to describe what they do in so much detail without trying to bury it in techno-babble. I interpret their policy as... You search for "dog chew". They find links to sites selling dog chews. You click on your chosen link and go to one of those sites. They make a note that "someone" went to that site from theirs - just enough so that they can bill that site for sending them X number of potential customers at the end of the month - literally, just the number of people - nothing at all about who they were. In fact, they don't even use IP Addesses - so they couldn't, for example, say that the had visits from "20 BT customers from the Manchester area" - it really does sound genuinely anonymous to me. The sort of data they are describing as using sounds no more "risky" than the sort used by a forum to say "Most number of users ever online - 246" - just counting heads without putting names to them. There's no mention of them ever "recommending" anything based on previous use - just for the specific item on each individual use. It sounds to me like nothing more than a search engine that only searches shopping sites - and does so without taking any personal data - unlike, say, Google's "shopping" option. I could be wrong and/or they could be lying - but from what I can see there and with nothing to suggest they are being dishonest, it actually seems completely safe in terms of privacy - and a lot safer than most regular search engines. If I've missed something, let me know. NB - I'm completely ignoring other possible criticisms of non-privacy elements - such as the possibility that their "recommendations" are based on their profits more than their users' savings. "Follow the money, if it's free to use who's paying and what for?" That's easy - they don't search for the best possible price - they only give prices from a finite list of sites that pay them when someone clicks-though to them. It's like asking someone where to get a good pint in Gloucester and them giving you directions to five pubs - all of them Bass pubs - because Bass pays them when you go to one of their pubs and say "Dave sent me". There may be ten much better Martson's pubs - but they aren't going to tell you that cos they wouldn't get paid. It doesn't mean those five Bass pubs are the best ones - they might be - just that you have to accept that they have a vested interest in sending you to the Dog & Duck - so you may want to ask a couple of other people the same question before deciding where to go for your pint. | ||
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| madslug |
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| Registered Member #266 Joined: Tue Apr 01 2008, 01:11PMPosts: 808 | I guess I feel strongly about it because someone with the toolbar could be on my site when the widget pops up and sends them off to a competing website. The big guys can offer goods at a loss to remove the smaller competition from the market. If this keeps going sites that don't pay to keep their visitors by showing them ads all the time they surf around the net will be out of business. | ||
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| Peter N |
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| Registered Member #507 Joined: Wed Jul 30 2008, 02:08PMPosts: 33 | Like I said, there are non-privacy related issues with all recommendation sites and tools. The real downer will come if we ever get to the stage where people rely on them rather than looking around for themselves - because that's when we risk ending up with a couple of big companies that can extort money from businesses who will either pay them or go bust. Hard to know what's right and wrong though - at least in simple, black & white terms. Most of us want the lowest price and we might decry the demise of local shops and the lack of flavour in fresh produce by we still spend the bulk of our shopping money in Tesco and its ilk. I "know" one thing - as in experience says it's all but a universal truth... ...People don't like toolbars. Toolbars have a strong, negative association and the public "know" that toolbars and malware go hand in hand. True or not, people actively avoid them on the whole. I suspect that this one will be like so many others - semi-imposed on people during the installation of some other "freeware" rather than having end-users look it up because they feel that they "need" it. In the real world, I seriously doubt it will pose too much of a threat in the few months it is around. Also, there's actually not much there to say that they have too many customers they can put you onto. When you think about it, there are a hell of a lot of things people buy - and that small company has to be able to show prices for a lot of them for anyone to take it seriously - and that means them either having thousands of "shops" on their books or just pushing everyone to one of the sites they already know and use - like Amazon or Argos. And that's without suggesting that if such toolbars and widgets ever did start to take off, you can bet you bottom dollar that Google would alter their system to make sure you are only seeing and clicking-through on ads that make money for them. For the end-user - nothing's going to change too much in the immediate future - not while Google rule the world when it comes to searching on-line. Bottom line, I get your concern but I wouldn't worry too much - I just can't see it and its like having any impact on people's buying habits. | ||
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