Re: 3 Proposals: session ID, business-card auth, customer auth

James Pitkow (pitkow@cc.gatech.edu)
Wed, 19 Jul 1995 18:35:36 -0400 (EDT)

Occupation (which I can match to a database of income to occupations and
determine the income level of this individual and those that are not
like this individual, etc.)
Company (which I can match to a database of companies and get oodles of
information about this person and thus the rest of the people who
visit my site.)

... (through all the other fields and then analysis of independence amongst
the attributes and clusters, etc.)

Now, if you enable mechanisms that permit log files to contain ids across
sites AND you do not impose a policy to protect users, then the information
enabling technology called the Web, potentially becomes a disabling
technology. To me, the Web is about information exchange, not information
concealment, elitism, or "I'll give you this only if you give me that."

Interestingly, it seems that companies on the Web are asking for more
information about the effectiveness of their advertising then they can
get now. When I buy a magazine off a newsstand, no one knows how long
I looked at the pages, what my name is, etc. Instead, companies make
their decisions based upon reliable estimates of subscription rates and
the demographics that compose those readers. How effective is
an ad in Time? Measure it empirically for me over every issue.

Regards,
Jim.