[tor-talk] Gmail and Bitcoin? [OT]

[Mike Hearn]

I'm not going to do things on an individual account level, sorry. I can't
even do what you're asking short of editing the source code, which
obviously isn't going to happen.

Re: are users who never click ads worth it. Well, there's a non-trivial
number of Google users who have never clicked an ad in the entire history
of their account. They don't get kicked out. Luckily for us (and them), the
users who find the ads relevant and useful bring in enough money to
subsidize the ones who don't. I note that you can find adverts useful even
if you are using a pseudonym. Maybe you'd see ads for anonymous hosting
services ;)

Are these users "interesting"? Well, Google has a fairly broad commitment
to freedom of expression. There are actually people whose entire job here
is to advocate for and work on freedom of expression. I know because I had
a lot of meetings with them about anonymizing proxy abuse :) Perhaps
because Sergey escaped the Soviet Union as a child, or maybe because it
makes sense regardless. For whatever reason, the interests of anonymous
users are represented here pretty well despite the lack of direct financial
incentive.




On Mon, Jan 14, 2013 at 7:46 PM, <adrelanos at riseup.net> wrote:

> Hi!
>
> Mike Hearn, in meanwhile could you please manually verify account names,
> which can provide proof for spam free behavior under a pseudonym?
>
> I hereby apply for a Google account (without any phone verification). This
> pseudonym is dedicated to Whonix (http://whonix.sf.net/) development and
> no spam has been send by me neither I do plan do japordize the reputation
> of this pseudonym.
>
> adrelanos at gmail dot com has been registered by me and would be my
> preferred account name. Registration never completed due to request for
> phone verification. (Recovery mail was set to this e-mail address
> adrelanos at riseup dot net.)
>
> As proof of identity I edited a Whonix wiki page
> (https://sourceforge.net/p/whonix/wiki/OnlineProfiles/#google-account)
> with my application for a Google account. Only project admins (and sf.net
> admins) are allowed to modify such pages.
>
> Intended purpose: uploading Whonix tutorial videos (html5) to youtube,
> participating google code.
>
> It would be great if you could manually whitelist my account.
>
> > Feel free to CC me on such discussions, if you like. Google isn't
> > against Tor.
>
> I find it positive that Google has a human and monitors this list and has
> a staff member to communicate.
>
> > [...]
>
> > As Mike Perry notes, targeted advertising doesn't actually know or
> > care about your real identity. It just wants to know that user 1234 is
> > more likely to click ad ABC than an DEF.
>
> Unproven claim: Anonymous users buy much less stuff, because that risks
> de-anonymizing them. Are they still attractive enough for Google?
>
> When TBB finally gets by tab isolation (or similar, see #3455 and #3600),
> Google won't be able to track users across tabs and websites. A user
> logged into gmail or youtube can no longer be correlated on google or any
> other website running google scripts. A user clicking on an advertisement
> on google or youtube could be unlinked on the target page and thus Google
> not getting a reward for hosting the advertisement. Will those users still
> be interesting for Google?
>
> Cheers,
> adrelanos
>
>