The NDP is reading your email
If you have Gmail, you’ll know that Google reads your emails to determine what ads will be relevant for you. And you might also know that Jack Layton and the NDP have put a lot of money into Google AdWords. Those are ads which appear when you do an internet search in Google.
Search for certain election related ‘key words’ in Google, and you’ll see an ad for Jack Layton mixed in with your search results.
So I’m looking in my email this morning, and I’m emailing a friend, asking her to volunteer on the Chris Reid (Toronto-Centre) campaign. I send the email and then what do I see at the top of the page?
‘Join Jack Layton’s Team‘.
Apparently the NDP aren’t just placing ads at the top of your search pages – they’ve paid Google to read your emails looking for the words ‘Stephen Harper’ or ‘Stephane Dion’. When they see those words in your personal email – they put an NDP ad at the top of the page.
It’s disturbing.
Advertising in Gmail is an ‘opt in’ feature of Google AdWords [click to see the opt in page]. Here’s Google’s helpful explainer for that opt-in feature [click image to enlarge]:
So someone at the NDP saw that, thought it was a good idea to read your email, ticked the ‘opt in’ box and is now invading your privacy and putting ads at the top of any email you have where you talk about politics. Write your mother and mention Stephen Harper or Stephane Dion- and there’s Jack Layton right over your shoulder.
Is that allowed? They’re not selling time shares (this is a regulated political party) does Elections Canada have rules about this type of behaviour?
The NDP make a big deal about privacy. Why not practice what they preach?
You seem to imply that the NDP receives notice from Google of the particular gmail accounts where the ads are displayed – but that’s not the case, is it. And don’t gmail users consent to this by continuing to maintain their gmail accounts? Your headline is really “Google is reading your email”, right? And, as I’ve seen similar Google Ads by the Tories and the Grits for years, this has nothing exclusively to do with the NDP, right?
Alan
September 12, 2008 at 4:34 pm
Cool!
As soon as I read your post, I immediately sent an email with ‘the names’ in it….by the time I got back to my inbox, I had a ‘Join Jack Layton’s team’ ad on my gmail…
That is WAY too fast for a human-interface (unless I’ve been getting them before and not noticed them, but I hope I would have noticed). Sounds more like they are paying Google to automatically scan for the words and ‘opt in’ if certain congruences occur.
xanthippa
September 12, 2008 at 8:19 pm
Oh yeah – it’s automatic. It’s a bot. Doesn’t make it less disturbing.
Robert
September 12, 2008 at 8:57 pm
But this actual information gathering by the Tories is fine?
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080912.welxnpolling13/BNStory/politics/home
I personally don’t care either way – having lived through PEI politics and understanding how no party ultimately really cares about your privacy – but I can tell the difference between a Google bot and a database of personal information.
Alan
September 13, 2008 at 12:32 pm
Wow, as Alan said, this concern is SO so 2002. You really think that the NDP knows who gets targeted for those ads? It’s just an algorithm that uses recursive grammars. If you bothered to read the Google TOS – or have ever advertised on Google yourself – you’d know that this is completely non-invasive. Unless you click on the link, of course, in which case you have the regular expectation of privacy of a surfer surfing, which is basically nil since you’re tied to an IP. That’s not new either, of course.
Renee
September 13, 2008 at 4:38 pm
(And, BTW, how is this more disturbing than, say, ANY OTHER GOOGLE ADVERTISING? Methinks you should simply stop using GMail and switch to a non-free provider with no inline advertising, if you’re worried. Ads are the price you pay for using GMail. It’s good conservative market value in action.)
Renee
September 13, 2008 at 4:41 pm
No, what I’m saying is that the NDP makes a lot of noise about privacy. If they really care about it, they shouldn’t have opted in to something that is a fairly big invasion of privacy.
Robert
September 13, 2008 at 10:45 pm
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Steynian 245 « Free Mark Steyn!
September 13, 2008 at 11:25 pm
But this is no more invasive than any other web advertising, which is context-sensitive insofaras where you’re coming from and what website you’re visiting. The NDP has issues about privacy, you’re right, but the issues are about government invasion of privacy (ie: legislated or using the vast powers of government), and sharing of private information without consent that is entrusted to our public institutions. Or, for that matter, the sharing of confidential information that companies have amassed in the course of doing business. That is not remotely the same as paying a computer to display an ad based on keywords which a user has agreed to in advance of signing up. Surely you can appreciate the difference?
Renee
September 14, 2008 at 1:01 am
My question is how things work when it comes to billing.
That is, when NDP receives its bill for the ads they have run in poeples gmails – do they get a list of addresses, along with theri registration info, if they ask for supporting materials to ‘prove’ where the ads went?
xanthippa
September 14, 2008 at 3:33 pm
No, it’s entirely based upon click-throughs. You can read it here.
Renee
September 14, 2008 at 5:41 pm
In my last article Local Advertising – The Biggest Mistakes we took a look at the major media available for local advertisers to market their products. To follow up, I’d like to discuss the many uses of Radio. Sort of the 10 Commandments Of Radio Advertising. This will take up several pages, for sure, so
redbulls
November 15, 2008 at 12:22 pm