MS TryingTo Identify All Web Surfers

[paul]

Microsoft is developing technology to identify users based on their browsing habit from raw info from different source, they will add new cookie program that will records the pages visited by users. "It could make a good guess about your identity from your browsing history" More on this; newscientisttech.com/article.ns?id=mg19426046.400&feedId=being-human_rss20

[kev woodman]

It's an interesting article but there's no suggestion that MS are going to be installing anything new on your system. At the moment this looks like fairly crude data mining and your favourite supermarket can undoubtedly tell more about you than MS are likely to be able to for a long time.

[paul]

I think MS is not alone on this, I guess google might be also trying to identify their users, for example they are already peeping through your inbox if you're using gmail, you can notice their ad in your inbox relevant content of your mail.

[kev woodman]

I guess the difference is that the MS technology is actively trying to identify you rather than trying to guess things about you so that they can sell you stuff. For instance I have a fairly well defined pseudonym that I use on the Web a lot and this identity has its own email account etc. Google may be able to guess from its gmail account that it enjoys monkey training (for example) but Google can't tell that it belongs to me. The MS software would try and do that.