Privacy What Privacy

The NY Times has a report on a company that will offer you free phone service, should you be willing to have your calls monitored.

The Web-based phone service is similar to Skype’s online service — consumers plug a headset and a microphone into their computers, dial any phone number and chat away. But unlike Internet phone services that charge by the length of the calls, Pudding Media offers calling without any toll charges.

The trade-off is that Pudding Media is eavesdropping on phone calls in order to display ads on the screen that are related to the conversation. Voice recognition software monitors the calls, selects ads based on what it hears and pushes the ads to the subscriber’s computer screen while he or she is still talking.

Absolutely frickin not.

Let's just say that once you've given up your expectation of privacy, the government is soon following behind.

[update]

Besides, Mr. Maislos said, he thought that young people, the group his company is focusing on with the call service, are less concerned with maintaining privacy than older people are.

“The trade-off of getting personalized content versus privacy is a concept that is accepted in the world,” he said.

Translation: Young people are too wrapped up in being cool to consider the long term implications of giving up their privacy. So we target them, like any other marketer and wait for older people with sense to die off.