Enhancing Online Privacy In Behavioral Targeting Advertisement Information Technology Essay

Enhancing Online Privacy In Behavioral Targeting Advertisement Information Technology Essay Advertisements are part of everyday life even if its not a choice. They are placed in every possible physically spot and in every kind of mass media. Advertising has become an important channel of modern marketing [19]. The purpose of advertisements can be brand awareness, brand promotion or brand sales and the method varies based on the media used. Internet media is an important communication channel and could not be an exception; therefore, display banner advertisement has become a big industry especially the latest years as advertisers struggle to approach ever-larger audiences with higher susceptibilities to consume. It is estimated that global online advertising market is valued $40 billion in 2009 and grown to $80 billion by 2010.[5] Yet, people actively avoid looking at online banners [1] and empirical and experimental studies show that advertising messages are noisy [2]. Meaning that people are anointed by the existence of advertisements on web and therefore the effectiveness of the advertisement campaign might be low for people that dislike this noise. A way to measure the effectiveness and success of online banner advertisements is CTR (Click Through Rate). A CTR is calculated by dividing the amount of users who clicked on an ad within a web page by the amount of times the ad was in total delivered (impressions). The average click-through rate of banner ads has been decreasing consistently, from 3% in the mid-1990s to 0.2% (eMarketer 2004). Studies showed that since we are faced with an ever expanding mass of information the  selection of the relevant bits of information seems to become more important than the retrieval of data [3]. The relevance of information is subjective and is related to the personal interest of each user. Hence, the idea of behavioural targeting within online advertisement was very quickly expanded in all countries and is today considered to be a mandatory service for the online advertisement industry. Online Behavioural targeting (OAB) is not a new practice within online advertisement industry; it was first released in late 1990s from DoubleClick to track users across sites and present banner advertisements based on their browsing preferences. [6] Interest based advertising is not a static area of technology. On the contrast, its continuously evolving and adapted to new techniques and methods, aiming to increase the revenues by succeeding on targeting the correct potential customers based on their personal interests. Its evolution combines web mining in data analysis of on-line users behaviour and machine learning in optimizing web on-line advertising [1] Companies in the industry use Interest based advertising as a solution for optimizing the selection of ads to display for a certain user. The selection of ads is based on an interest profile built up during visits to websites within a specific ad network. Problems with behavioural targeting The problem in todays solution within interest based advertisement is that since users have the ability to choose to surf in private mode, by selecting this choice from the browser, it is impossible to gather anonymous data about their interests. In advance, although online behavioral advertising promises to decrease the noise and increase the users interest, there is a great concern and protest, particularly among privacy and consumer advocacy groups [6] mainly because of the technology that is been used. In addition to the general disapproval of the fact that the majority of advertising companies store and use their customers information in a non-ethical way, an upcoming refinement of the methods which advertising companies use to inform their users about their online tracking is expected due to an EU directive issued on 2009 [15]. This directive is expected to redefine the implementation and operation of current methods used for retrieval of identification data, since every online advertising agency should explicitly ask for the users consent before accessing and processing his data. Current technology background As mentioned previously, apart from the fact that current behavioral advertising techniques fail to retrieve the appropriate information regarding their target groups, they also neglect the security concerns. Most of them seem to focus more on attracting users attention and persuade them to purchase without taking into consideration their privacy. As a result, security attacks are highly related with current advertising methods, thus making customers suspicious and face rather negatively the fact that their online behavior is monitored. In this section we will first provide a brief description of the available techniques that are widely used from the advertising industry, in order to familiarize the reader with some basic underlying concepts. Consequently, we will specify which of these technologies are used by some of the leading advertising companies aiming to track users online preferences, how they manage to deal with security attacks and why they still fail to convince people that they perform their privacy protection efficiently. One of the most common techniques used to track online behavior nowadays are Cookies. These are text files created by web sites and placed into users hard disk. When a user is visiting a site this file is placed automatically in a specific repository that each browser retains to store cookies. The next time the user choses to visit again this specific site, he will be uniquely identified based on the information that cookie has stored for him[7]. This information can be related to his browsing history, such as the sites he has visited, the usernames and passwords he provided to log into them etc., or information regarding his systems or networks details, such as browser type and version, operating system he uses or his IP address[8]. Another, relatively new introduced method is Deep Packet Inspection (DPI). It is mainly carried out within the users ISP consent and cooperation with advertising companies, since it uses specific software and hardware aiming to retrieve information regarding the online preferences of ISP customers [9]. This information may include details regarding sensitive private data, such as name, sex or location of the user as well as his browsing and purchasing history. On the other hand, web beacons are often used for behavioral tracking also. They are usually a chunk of code linked to a graphic image that is not visible to the user in the foreground of a Web page. It can be used to collect either anonymous data, and in this case are stored in the cache of web browser or personal information which can be retrieved for example from an email containing the web beacon [10]. The techniques mentioned in the previous paragraph are widely used by some of the most dominant companies in the advertising industry, which aim to construct the users profiles based on the tracking of their interests. In this section we will examine how companies like DoubleClick, Phorm and Yahoo exploit the available web techniques to gather information about their users and how they manage to protect the privacy of them. DoubleClick, which was founded in 90s and managed to evolve into one of the most well-known online advertising agencies was acquired by Google Inc.in 2007. They use web cookies that are stored on users browser each time he chooses to visit Google, DoubleClick or some of their partners (YouTube, Amazon etc.). Hence, they retrieve information based on both general browsing history of the user as well as his searching or purchasing history through specific advertising sites. The DoubleClick Cookie is stored in the web browser as a log file containing the time that the user interacted with the advertisement, the users IP address, a number specifying the advertisement, a unique identification number for the users browser and the url path of the site that hosts the advertisement [11]. As such, DoubleClick claims to use information that dont violate users privacy and dont use sensitive personal data to construct the users online profile. Phorm uses Deep Packet Inspection to acquire information from the users online preferences. It cooperates with ISPs to collect data regarding their customers and uses the existing ISP infrastructure to achieve this. The main procedure it follows is to mark each browser with a different random number and relate it with the 10 most often keywords that appear in the visited sites and as such construct a channel, which is a specific subset of users interests [13]. Yahoo makes use of web beacons and the so called Yahoo Cookies, in order to offer their users more focused to their interests advertisements [14]. They use both anonymous and personal data, but in the latter case they require partners to disclose the presence of web beacons in their privacy policies and state what choices are available to users regarding the collection and use of this information, as stated in their website[14]. As such, they rely on their partners privacy policies to efficiently protect the personal information of their users and also inform the user about the action of collecting his private data. Related privacy concerns Despite the fact that all the previously mentioned advertising agencies offer an opt-out choice to their users [15], which allow them to disable the tracking methods operation, there is a lot of discussion about the level in which they succeed in protecting their users privacy. The greater issue of controversy between privacy advocates and advertising agencies focuses on whether all these companies actually use the retrieved information in an ethical way, and if this information is indeed anonymous. Numerous reports depict that Abacus Alliances, which owns databases containing personal information and is one of the major cooperators of DoubleClick utilize sensitive data of DoubleClicks visitors [12]. Phorm has been constantly accused from UK tabloids and Privacy Protection Organizations to infringe Internet Users rights by acquiring and storing personal information, and has also intrigued EU s interest which has launched several legal proceedings against UK for not complying with the EU security rules [20]. Research Methodology In order to provide an accomplished approach to our research we consider that the most suitable inquiry method is Qualitative Methodology and more specifically the conceptual inductive research process since it this is used in almost every workplace and study environment [17] and covers our research structure and means. Within a qualitative study we can generate data in the form of participant descriptions of their experiences and use literary analytic procedures to produce higher-order descriptions and understandings of the investigated experience [18]. First, we will investigate the dominant tendencies of tracking users online behaviour and create the corresponding profiles for marketing purposes. By looking into the main web tools and techniques they deploy to retrieve information about the visitors of their sites, we will try to find out how they manage to build an overall picture of their preferences. We will particularly examine these techniques through a point of view of privacy concerns. In fact we will examine the ways they claim to successfully use towards protecting the privacy of their users, and in which degree they actually manage to achieve this. This part of our survey will be carried out through a data collection procedure based on three different sources of information: The official sites of these companies, in which they describe the basic techniques that use for online behavioral targeting and what policies they follow to protect the privacy of their users. Articles and papers which discuss and evaluate these techniques, by pointing out the basic points in which they fail to efficiently provide privacy security. Previous surveys and statistics which indicate that either users are not interested in the advertisements they are exposed to, or their distrust to the level of the protection they perceive that these companies offer to them. On the next step, our research will deal with a combination of technologies that aim to collect anonymous information regarding customers behaviour and use them for behavioural advertisement targeting. As such, its goal will be to succeed in providing efficient advertise targeting along with showing respect to the users need for privacy and freedom of choice. On the third part of our research, we will try to testify the acceptance of our proposed technique. We consider that the most suitable way to achieve this is within a questionnaire that will give us feedback for our proposal. Related Research The selection of the target group for this questionnaire was based on the following criteria: The target group should consist of people that have regular contact with various Web sites. This means that they have already experienced being exposed to online advertisements, and as such will be better able to express a well-argued opinion about online advertising issues. It would be also useful that they acquire basic knowledge regarding the common tools and methods basically used to track their online behavior. Of course this doesnt mean that they should have in deep knowledge of the technical aspects of these methods, but rather a general sense of how it is feasible for an advertising company to get information about their online behavior. The above consequently imply that the target group should consist of young-aged people, who are the main Internet users and usually have daily interaction with web applications. For practical purposes it would be more convenient that the target group is easily accessible from us and is also familiar with Research and Scientific concepts. As such, it will be of greater interest to them to take part in our survey. For the above reasons we regarded that the most suitable target audience for our questionnaire are KTH and DSV students. Our questions will deal with both examining their opinion about the effectiveness of our proposal in correctly identifying their interests and defining the level of their trust to the privacy protection that it guarantees. The final step will be to collect and evaluate the results coming out of our survey, in order to reach our final conclusions. Literature references [1] Drà ¨ze, X., and Hussherr, F.-X. (2004). Internet Advertising: Is Anybody Watching? Journal of Interactive Marketing , 8-23. [2] Bharat N. Anand  · Ron Shachar (2009) Targeted advertising as a signal Quant Mark Econ (2009) 7:237-266 [3]Hildebrandt, M. and Gutwirth, S. (eds.), Profiling the European Citizen, Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives, Springer, p.1 (2008) (Profiling the European Citizen) [4] J. Jaworska and M. Sydow (2008) Behavioural Targeting in On-Line Advertising: An Empirical Study [5] Policy Engagement Network The Information Systems and Innovation Group, ONLINE ADVERTISING:Confronting the Challenges. MAY 2009 [6] V.Toubiana, A.Narayanan, D.Boneh, (2009) Adnostic: Privacy Preserving Targeted Advertising [7]: JOON S. PARK AND RAVI SANDHU, Secure Cookies on the Web, IEEE INTERNET COMPUTING, July-August 2000 [8]: Daniel Lin, Michael C. Loui, Taking the Byte Out of Cookies: Privacy, Consent, and the Web, Ethics and Social Impact, ACM Policy 98 [9]: Gabriel Maci ´a-Fern ´andez, Yong Wang, Rafael Rodr ´Ãƒâ€žÃ‚ ±guez-G ´omez, Aleksandar Kuzmanovic,ISP-Enabled Behavioral Ad Targeting without Deep Packet Inspection,IEEE INFOCOM 2010 proceedings [10]: JOSHUA GOMEZ, TRAVIS PINNICK, ASHKAN SOLTAN, KNOW PRIVACY, UC Berkeley, School of Information, : JUNE 1st 2009 p.8-9 [11]: http://www.google.com/privacy/ads/ [12]: Ethan Preston Law Clerk, In the Matter of DoubleClick Inc.- Complaint and Request for Injunction, Request for Investigation and for Other Relief, submitted to Federal Trade Commission, February 10, 2000 [13]: http://www.phorm.com/ [14]: http://info.yahoo.com/privacy/us/yahoo/webbeacons/ [15]: 2007/0248 (COD), Directive Of The European Parliament And Of Council, Electronic communications: universal service, users rights relating to networks and services, processing of personal data, protection of privacy, consumer protection cooperation [Telecoms Package  (amend.  Directives 2002/22/EC, 2002/58/EC and Regulation (EC)  No 2006/2004)], Brussels, 22 October 2009 [16]: http://www.networkadvertising.org/participating/ [17] : http://www.qsrinternational.com/what-is-qualitative-research.aspx [18]: D. E. Polkinghorne, Handbook of Clinical Psychology Competencies, 2009 [19]: Adams M (1995) Brands of gold. Mediaweek 13:30-32 [20]: OsborneClark.com, International Online Behavioral Advertising Survey, 2010 [21]: Anton, A.I., Earp, J.B., Young, J.D., How Internet Users Privacy Concerns Have Evolved since 2002,   Security Privacy, IEEE, Volume :  Ã‚  8 ,   Issue:1  , Jan.-Feb. 2010  p.24

Apparts Jacob Riis

This document was written by Jacob A. Riis, an excerpt from his How the Other Half Lives. The author views that most people do not realize the tremendous amount of poverty surrounding them. They do not realize how the â€Å"other half† of the population; meaning the poor, manage to make it through a living. Riis wants to describe the living conditions of the lower class to create Americans an image of how the poor has many difficulties. Place and Time: Jacob Riis wrote this document in the late nineteenth century. This was when immigrants, mostly from Southern and Eastern Europe, came in an abundance amount of number to American cities very rapidly. However, Jacob Riis focuses mainly on New York City in this excerpt, for it was the major entry port for Europeans and possessed more foreign-born residents and more densely populated neighborhoods than any other U. S. city. Prior Knowledge: The first great wave of immigration began in the 1820s during a period in American history that witnessed expansion, innovation, and the beginning of a modern society. The United States offered hope with the prospect of prosperity and security for many Europeans struggling with the post Napoleonic period. The arrival of so many immigrants created massive problems in Northern cities. The Five Points district in New York City spawned the cholera outbreak during the presidency of Andrew Jackson which led to stereotyping immigrants by middle class and wealthy Americans. Emerging slums further intensified sanitation concerns and produced irrational fears. By the 1850s, strong nativist feelings led to the formation of the American party, often referred to as the â€Å"Know-Nothings. † Believing that low-wage earning immigrants would take away jobs and fearful of the perceived authoritarianism of Catholicism, Know-Nothings attempted to pass strict laws restricting immigrants. Both Irish and German immigrants helped forge the new nation precisely at a time when innovation, creativity, and labor were needed. Germans like Horace Mann in the 1830s and 1840s reformed American education. Carl Schurz, a founder of the Republican Party and a refugee of the 1848 Revolutions in Europe, became a national leader, championing Abraham Lincoln, crusading for party reform after the Civil War, and strongly opposing American imperialism at the turn of the century. Audience: Jacob Riis’ intended audience would most likely be anyone that is not aware of the living conditions of the lower class or poor people/immigrants/families; particularly the â€Å"half† of the people who were rich, though. Riis just wanted Americans to have a glimpse of life among the urban poor. Reason: Jacob Riis, who became a crusader for the eradication of tenement slums, intended on describing the crowded conditions and the â€Å"cosmopolitan character of lower New York. † Riis wanted to provide numerous Americans their first glimpse of life among the urban poor. He wanted to show people how the lower classes manage to live in the horrible conditions that they are in. The Main Idea: The main idea was that American cities were vastly and rapidly being populated by immigrants, mostly from Southern and Eastern Europe. However, the majority of these immigrants were living in poverty. They were residing in crowded conditions, not being able to support their family or themselves without any sort of income, food, or property. Being the â€Å"other half† that were poor; they did not get enough if any, attention from the â€Å"other half† that were either rich or classified as the upper class. In this excerpt, Jacob Riis acknowledges the living conditions of the poor; he sees how they get by with their daily lives. He just wonders if they are all corrupted or not, and speedily, by their atrocious surroundings. He also believes however, that things cannot get any worse. He believes that the slums’ sediment was going for a steadier growth. Significance: I believe the significance of this document is how Jacob Riis acknowledges how the lower classes of immigrants in New York City live in their horrible conditions. He points out all the clear facts on how they live in poverty in such, but he also mentions how things could not really get any worse. Most immigrants had absolutely nothing, so the only way they could go, was up. He pointed out that their sediment grew at a steady rate and that a German rag-picker, someone who was considered to be as low in the scale as his Italian successor, could be compared equally to a thrifty tradesman or prosperous farmer today. This shows that if any slum or person of a lower class had motivation to thrive and prosper, he or she could easily do so by steadily working up, or have the optimist’s belief that the world is, after all, growing better, not worse.

Whatever They Told You About Excellent College Essay Samples Is Dead Wrong...And Heres Why

Whatever They Told You About Excellent College Essay Samples Is Dead Wrong...And Here's Why The Basic Facts of Excellent College Essay Samples At exactly the same time, you are going to impress the college admissions folks greatly if it is possible to present your capacity to learn from your failures and mistakes. Instead, think about a compelling reason you would want to visit college and compose that reason down. Attempt to conclude with an illustration of the way the failure improved the direction you deal with similar situations now. Unique things to various men and women, since the situation demanded. When you start to compose your college application essay, think about all the things which make you the person which you are. The primary goal behind essay writing isn't just sharing our feelings and views with the readers each of the times. For a beginning, the usual application essay topics need you to use language that's absolutely free from language flaws and grammatical mistakes. When you follow your intended language from the beginning, you will produce the essay more consistent to the conventions of that language. Because you are interested in getting the essay to communicate the ideal information about you, you should do thorough preparation for the sample college admission essays to attain its purposes. If you wish to create a college essay which works, you want to provide importance on the content which you will supply the admissions officer of your intended university with. Your college essay should contain information that are related to the instruction offered to you. Just because you've already written a college essay for a single university doesn't mean that it may also apply on your next applications. You have to show the admission committee what makes you stick out from the other applicants. Many college authorities ask that you compose an application essay before getting an admission. Colleges are more inclined to admit students who can articulate certain explanations for why the school is an excellent fit about them beyond its reputation or ranking on any list. From grades to community assistance, most colleges have specific requirements they will search for in students. Be certain your essay explains everything the reader should know to comprehend what you were facing. By now you know precisely what you will write about and how you would like to tell the story. The author starts with a rather thorough story of an event or description of an individual or place. To determine what should be finished, you ought to take a look at a wonderful deal of other essay examples. When you surf our site for recommendations that may help you write your own essay, you will come across many helpful tips. The total format of your essay, for example, font size and margins, will solely are based on the instructions provided to you. For more help, have a look at our article on thinking up wonderful tips for your essay topic. When you're finished writing, you want to make sure your essay still adheres to the prompt. Oftentimes, the most effective essay topic is one which lets a number of your imperfections seep through. You have to remember an essay example ought to have a critical tone to it, or in different words, it shouldn't be humorous. The essay, to put it differently, paints an extremely very good picture of our author. The way you begin your essay is important to the reception your essay will receive, so this step should take up lots of your essay writing process. The way you start your application essay is critical to how well it'll be received. Ease yourself in the essay-writing approach. An essay outline can help you organize the total structure of your essay. The prompt for this essay clarifies that even when you don't have a special story to tell, you still need to don't hesitate to choose this topic. Following your nomination, you're required to forward an essay. This essay would like to know whether this mindset of out-of-the-box-ness is something you're already comfortable with. A superb essay is one which leaves an enduring impression. As stated earlier, it would follow the standard personal essay format. Bridget's essay is extremely strong, but there continue to be a couple little things that could be made better. Stephen's essay is quite effective.

Bradley University Acceptance Rate, SAT/ACT Scores, GPA

Bradley University is a a private university with an acceptance rate of 67%. Founded in 1897, Bradleys 84-acre campus is located in Peoria, Illinois. Undergraduates can choose from 185 programs spread across the universitys five colleges: Foster College of Business, Slane College of Communications and Fine Arts, College of Education and Health Sciences, Caterpillar College of Engineering and Technology, and College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Bradley has a 12-to-1  student/faculty ratio  and an average class size of 21 students. On the athletic front, the Bradley Braves compete in the NCAA Division I  Missouri Valley Conference. Considering applying to Bradley University? Here are the admissions statistics you should know, including average SAT/ACT scores and GPAs of admitted students. Acceptance Rate During the 2017-18 admissions cycle, Bradley University had an acceptance rate of 67%. This means that for every 100 students who applied, 67 students were admitted, making Bradleys admissions process competitive. Admissions Statistics (2017-18) Number of Applicants 11,209 Percent Admitted 67% Percent Admitted Who Enrolled (Yield) 15% SAT Scores and Requirements Bradley University requires that all applicants submit either SAT or ACT scores. During the 2017-18 admissions cycle, 65% of admitted students submitted SAT scores. SAT Range (Admitted Students) Section 25th Percentile 75th Percentile ERW 550 640 Math 540 650 ERW=Evidence-Based Reading and Writing This admissions data tells us that most of Bradleys admitted students fall within the top 35% nationally on the SAT. For the evidence-based reading and writing section, 50% of students admitted to Bradley scored between 550 and 640, while 25% scored below 550 and 25% scored above 640. On the math section, 50% of admitted students scored between 540 and 650, while 25% scored below 540 and 25% scored above 650. Applicants with a composite SAT score of 1290 or higher will have particularly competitive chances at Bradley. Requirements Bradley University does not require the SAT writing section. Note that Bradley does not superscore SAT results; your highest composite SAT score will be considered. ACT Scores and Requirements Bradley University requires that all applicants submit either SAT or ACT scores. During the 2017-18 admissions cycle, 61% of admitted students submitted ACT scores. ACT Range (Admitted Students) Section 25th Percentile 75th Percentile English 23 30 Math 23 28 Composite 23 28 This admissions data tells us that most of Bradleys admitted students fall within the top 31% nationally on the ACT. The middle 50% of students admitted to Bradley received a composite ACT score between 23 and 28, while 25% scored above 28 and 25% scored below 23. Requirements Note that Bradley University does not superscore ACT results; your highest composite ACT score will be considered. Bradley does not require the ACT writing section. GPA In 2018, the average high school GPA of Bradley Universitys incoming class was 3.76, and over 50% of students had average high school GPAs of 3.75 and above. These results suggest that most successful applicants to Bradley University have primarily A grades. Self-Reported GPA/SAT/ACT Graph Bradley University Applicants Self-Reported GPA/SAT/ACT Graph. Data courtesy of Cappex. The admissions data in the graph is self-reported by applicants to Bradley University. GPAs are unweighted. Find out how you compare to accepted students, see the real-time graph, and calculate your chances of getting in with a free Cappex account. Admissions Chances Bradley University, which accepts just over two-thirds of applicants, has a somewhat selective admissions process. If your SAT/ACT scores and GPA fall within the schools average ranges, you have a strong chance of being accepted. Keep in mind that Bradley has a holistic admissions process involving other factors beyond your grades and test scores. A strong application essay and a glowing letter of recommendation can strengthen your application, as can participation in meaningful extracurricular activities  and a rigorous course schedule. Students with particularly compelling stories or achievements can still receive serious consideration even if their grades and test scores are outside Bradleys average range. In the graph above, the blue and green dots represent accepted students. The great majority of admitted students had and ACT composite score of 18 or higher, a combined SAT score (ERWM) of  950 or higher, and an unweighted high school GPA of a B or better. Having grades and test scores above these lower ranges will significantly improve your chances of being admitted. If You Like Bradley University, You May Also Be Interested in These Colleges: University of Chicago,Wesleyan UniversityWake Forest UniversityTufts UniversityColgate University All admissions data has been sourced from the National Center for Education Statistics and Bradley University Undergraduate Admissions Office.