If you are disturbed by the fact that our search queries are systematically monitored and stored, then this plugin is for you.

TrackMeNot is a Mozilla plugin that periodically issues randomized search queries to search engines. Instead of preventing search engines from tracking your queries, TrackMeNot, instead, obfuscates and creates smoke in the queries, making it very difficult for search engines to know much about you.

The creators of TrackMeNot were motivated by the recent AOL debacle and the fact that there is systematic and arbitrary surveillance of our activities. They believe that some things ought to be hands-off. Legal approaches take too long; the search engine’s won’t concede; so, what’s left is to sabotage their efforts by creating a lot of smoke in your queries.

Implication of the Obfuscation Approach

Yes, say that heading 10 times …

Continuing,

Our queries and search behaviors profoundly reflect who we are, our interests, what we care about, and how we live our lives; as such, the web becomes the database and hence many good things could be produced from that information. One area that will really be impacted by this approach of obfuscation is the area of Personalization. I believe that obfuscating data to confuse search engines and other online services that monitor our behavior will be the approach that most will follow.

Personalization is the holy grail of the web and hinges on three major items: Trust, Attention, and Relevance (TAR); Greg at Findory and, previously with Amazon, has done an excellent job in this field. But, with more and more obfuscation of data, personalization results will become more garbage-ridden; that is, it will eventually fall into the state of Garbage-In-Garbage-Out. In other words, Relevance will almost be impossible to accomplish.

Another area — a sub-area of personalization — are contextual ad serving engines. I can easily see services that aim to confuse contextual ad engines. This means, if true, that advertisers’ ads will be rendered not because of what the user is doing (Relevancy), but because of garbage that the obfuscation engine is outputting. In other words, the effectiveness of contextual advertising will be severely diminished — Trust and Attention will be difficult to buld in this scenario. The loser? The companies seeking to learn more about us.

Granted, companies that want to know more about us do so, so that they can market to, pitch products to us, and capitalize of their knowledge of us. But, some of that marketing can actually be useful for the consumer. Obfuscation of data breaks this model — it can ruin the good and the bad that comes from companies knowing about their audience.

Conclusion

Obfuscation as an approach to protect our online behaviors is smart and effective. But, it has implications for computing, ecommerce, and a more relevant and personalized web.