Real Life Internet Evil: Microsoft's Smart Tags
Our purpose with this series is to use real life examples of
deception, fraud and other evil to show how you can better
protect yourself. The examples cited in these articles are
intended to demonstrate best practices and recommendations.
You've worked hard on your web pages. If you are anything like
me, you've spent countless hours writing content, finding or
creating graphics, cursing at tables, juggling lists and
learning HTML and possibly even CSS, Java, DHTML and countless
other things.
My web site is uniquely mine. It is a product of my imagination,
my sweat, my brain and my frustration. I have spent many
sleepless nights and countless long days adding just the perfect
content to communicate exactly what I wanted to say.
Now Microsoft has come along with a "brilliant" idea. They want
to piggyback their own selected content on top of that work. The
idea is to have their products (such as Internet Explorer and
the Office suite) scan web pages and documents for keywords and
phrases known to the Microsoft. Any of these that are found
would be underlined with a special purple "squiggle" to show
that they are "smart tags".
Anyone viewing the page could then click on the smart tag and be
transported to a Microsoft web site for more information. For
example, you could write a web page about the Grand Canyon, and
the phrase "Grand Canyon" could be underlined, allowing your
visitors to check out the Expedia.Com page about how to book
travel to the area.
Why does Microsoft want to do this? It's really very simple - to
make an incredible amount of money. Look at it this way,
Microsoft suddenly would have at their disposal every single
document viewed with a new Microsoft product as a potential
advertisement. Wow. That's power. No, this is an understatement
of incredible magnitude. This is more than power - this is the
harnessing of everyone's creative energy into a huge global
advertising tool. It totally staggers the imagination.
You could be looking at a newspaper site, reading an article
about train travel, and click on numerous links to Microsoft
sites (and presumably third party sites which paid Microsoft for
the privilege) selling train related products and services. If
you read a classified ad on that same newspaper site selling an
automobile, the word "Cadillac" could be underlined with a smart
tag linking to a Cadillac dealer.
Content (the tags) are added dynamically to web pages by the
browser without the permission of the person who created the
pages (the webmaster or author). While strictly speaking this
might not violate copyright laws (but it might be considered
vandalism), it sure is rude. In fact, most people would consider
it highly unethical.
As an example, suppose you bought a book through a book club.
Before it was shipped to you, someone opened the book and
examined every single page, adding comments here and there about
how you could purchase this or get more information about that.
You would be very annoyed if you were the author, you'd probably
be livid if you were the publisher of the book, and you'd almost
certainly return it if you were the customer.
Carefully crafted web pages whose look and feel has been
lovingly built for countless hours by dedicated designers,
authors, artists and webmasters would be randomly covered with
trash by a company intent on siphoning away visitors to their
own sites and pages.
And what about the problem of inappropriate content? Suppose you
had a site which was against animal cruelty, yet Smart Tags went
ahead and added to your pages links to other sites which sold
muzzles for horses? You wouldn't like that very much, would you?
Another problem is that Smart Tags are "opt-out". This means the
tags are inserted unless you (the webmaster or the user)
indicate that you do not want them. Opt-Out is the preferred
method of removal for many advertisers because they understand
that most people will not bother to remove themselves from the
list. Opt-in is the preferred method of most consumers because
then they receive only what they have requested.
Webmasters can keep smart tags from working on their site by
including a special "opt-out" metatag in the header of each and
every page. I highly recommend that all webmasters include this
tag to prevent smart tags from operating.
As soon as Smart Tags appeared in a beta release of Windows XP,
the furor began. It was awesome to see. Microsoft was hit from
all sides by just about everyone, because their intentions were
so transparent and so blatantly monopolistic that even the most
conservative could see what they were up to. The dangers caused
a flood of protests to be received by the giant company, so many
that Microsoft was forced to remove the feature from their
products.
"As a result of smart tags in beta versions of Windows XP and
IE, we received lots of feedback, and have realized that there
is a need to better balance the user experience with the
legitimate concerns of content providers and web sites,"
Microsoft said in a statement on June 28th, 2001.
Keep an eye on Microsoft, however, because they also added,
"Microsoft remains committed to this type of technology, and
will work closely with content providers and partners in the
industry in the coming months to further refine how it can be
used."