Doing my usual Facebook maintenance tonight and I see another intriguing advertisement. The mix of the hot chicks and making more money got me wondering what it was all about. Was this an ad for swim suit models? Who could be behind such an ad?

Well, it is my "old friend" Jeff who is now is "Dave Williams from Bellevue , WA". Interesting. I live in Bellevue WA as well. Nice targeted marketing Dave/Jeff/Kevin. Even though he is now Dave, the image filename is still "about_jeff.gif" He still is showing the "stimulus" check that he got from the US Treasury. Guessing he got that check (yeah, right), figured out how to run ads on Facebook and Google to get paid to send people to a site selling a kit to make money from Google. This sounds like the kit that Dave/Jeff/Kevin bought where he learned he could make money sending other people to buy the kit. Image of ad below. Link was http://davegetsgreen.com/.

While getting my nightly dose of Facebook, I came across the following two ads on the same page:

With both ads offering to help me get some money, I had to check them out. Here are screenshots of the pages I landed on:

Well, I guess we have some A|B testing going on here. Same style, same photo for both Jeff Donahue and Kevin Hoeffe. At least they are on different URLs and have different comments. The photoshopped name on the check is a nice touch.  My confidence in the advice from either one of them on getting a grant? Zero. I see this as a great demonstration of how we need to make the Internet more accountable.

Being in the identity space, and having a product that manages people’s identity, the topic of privacy comes up often. In development of Sxipper we had a goal of making sure we were protecting people’s privacy, not reducing it. Perhaps it is because we are Canadian where privacy is a right, and privacy laws restrict what organizations can do with your personal information. This is in sharp contrast to US privacy laws which are about stating what organizations can do with your personal information. Sxipper’s privacy policy is all about what we will and won’t do with your data, with an emphasis on what we will NOT do.

Discussing this topic has led to questions about when is using someone’s data perceived as a privacy problem and I came up with Dick’s Privacy Guideline. (note there is only one guideline, and yes, I did just make up the name)

If the user is pleasantly surprised or does not notice, the use of identity information is a feature. If the user is unpleasantly surprised, then it is a privacy problem.

For example, if you add a book on Barbados to your Amazon shopping cart, you will see recommendations of books that other people bought that also bought that book. Most people will think this is either a pleasant surprise as they see additional books they are interested in, or not really notice.

Contrast this with buying the book on Barbados on Amazon, and then going to Facebook and seeing an advertisement for a Barbados hotel. This is not a pleasant surprise. You wonder how Facebook found out about your interest in Barbados.

As a guideline, it is a little fuzzy, but we have found it useful when building Sxipper to have a seamless user experience by gathering and remembering identity information while avoiding unpleasant surprises.