The sale of data from cookies in third-party datamarts is well established (Time to shed light on the dark art of behavioural advertising). Nothing sinister happens to users – the absolute worst case scenario is that you google “DIY” and B&Q advertising follows you around the internet. Is that such a bad thing? Probably better than being followed by those terrible ads with the before and after diet/exercise photos.

Retaining your privacy online is simple – all you do is use the “private browsing” functionality.
The people who have a problem with re-targeting fall into one of three camps:

1. They are ignorant of how it is done, and see the sinister hand of Big Brother (or they are looking at a lot of content that is unsavoury and don’t want anyone to find out).

2. They work for a legal practice and smell a tasty lawsuit because the law is ill-defined and the public are ill-informed and therefore paranoid about privacy.

3. They are politicians and think they can stir up silly and misplaced fear that might sway a few votes from ill-informed people.

Personally, I can’t see a problem with DIY ads following me around when I’m looking for DIY on the net.

John Stephens

It is interesting that negative opinions of integrated systems come so high in your recent survey of IT leaders (CIOs rail against vendor lock-in).

My guess is that the survey was conducted mainly in larger companies, in which case dealing with one main vendor for everything can certainly be restrictive.

For small companies without the skilled IT staff to glue everything together, having everything under one roof may well make more sense.

R Sprule

In some ways working with the big vendors is a bit like doing business with banks; “too big to fail” comes into play, with the sheer cost and difficulty of migration creating a de facto lock-in (CIOs rail against vendor lock-in).

It also doesn’t help that the vendors practically NEVER have comparable pricing arrangements – what’s free from one is chargeable from another. The only way to avoid making a costly mistake is with an absolutely watertight RFP and careful negotiation.

Gavin Burke

I was alarmed and dismayed to read the letter from Omar defending Syria’s president Assad against quips in Backbytes (Backbytes has got Assad all wrong).

Are you allowing Computing to become a vehicle for debates on the rights and wrongs of political activities around the world? Are you now going to grant space to one of the anti-Assad demonstrators so that can make their case against him?

Computing should not be used in this way.  The clue is in the title.

John A G Smith

It seems possible that Sony’s Tablet S was picked for the Pope because it’s specifically set up to act as a remote control (The Sony of God)?

Though why one needs any sort of tablet to turn on Christmas lights when a simple switch would do the job is beyond me.

Jane