I’m not somone who’s paranoid about privacy rights.
Some people refuse to use the supermarket discount cards because the supermarkets are tracking what they buy; I say, so what?
I don’t bother to delete the browser cookies that advertisers use to track my web browsing habits.
And if John Ashcroft wants to see a list of the books I’ve bought because he thinks I’m involved in international terrorism, I won’t complain if he gets a court order under the Patriot Act to obtain my records from Amazon.com.
But something happened today that surprised me and made me wonder if Yahoo! hadn’t gone a bit far.
I served my (LDS/Mormon) mission in Italy, so I speak Italian (although it’s pretty rusty. I have a cousin who’s taking an Italian class, and she e-mailed me to ask for some help with an assignment. The subject of her e-mail was “ITALIANO.”
I helped her as best I could and replied to her e-mail, using Yahoo! Mail. And, on the page confirming the e-mail had been sent, I got a large Flash ad for Alitalia, the Italian airline.
My first thought on seeing that ad was “Yahoo! is reading my e-mail!”
However, that is not the only possible explanation. I went to a few web sites involved in Italian-English translation. How did I find those sites? I did a search for “italian-english dictionary.” And I did the search on Yahoo!
And, in fact, since the text of the ad was something along the lines of “You don’t need to speak Italian to get our low fares,” it seems the ad was targeted at those who might need an Italian-English dictionary. So that is almost certainly the explanation.
But it still was a little creepy seeing the ad right after sending the e-mail.
(Note: This entry was originally published on my now-defunct political blog, Attilathepundit.com.)