Is this legal???

[fxtrader28]

I did a search on google of my adsense id and i found this site: ads*spy*com.
It claims that if you register for a fee you can check in which sites your adsense,google analytics,yahoo partner, chitika etc id appears.. In other words anybody can spy on everybody.
I think that this is a massive invasion of privacy..
What do you think??

 

[DN BROKER]

what is the link?

 

[fxtrader28]

ads*spy*com without the asterisks

 

[TestCase]

Hmmm, sounds like a search engine targeting Adsense publishers and the like...

I'm a HUGE privacy fan and know what you are saying, but once a piece of information is placed on the internet where it is "publicly accessible" without stated usage restrictions -- even if it's hidden behind the scenes in your code (but then again so are meta tags that we want to be used) -- others will do with it as they see fit.

Unless one has the financial where-with-all to mount a legal challenge, I don't think there's much that can be done to stop a third party's use of information that is "freely and openly provided". (Though it would be nice to hope that such third parties would be good citizens and remove said information when requested.)

Just noticed this on their site...

Information used by adsspy.com is retrieved from open sources of public information. Adsspy.com does this in absolutely legal way.

Unfortunately the following two quotes sum things up pretty well when it comes to the internet -- and life in general...

Scott McNealy, chairman of Sun Microsystems, in 1999 said, "You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it."

and

An observation by Oracle CEO Larry Ellison: "The privacy you're concerned about is largely an illusion. All you have to give up is your illusions, not any of your privacy."

 

[weblord]

i would not see that if i were you not unless on a web proxy, i don't support these type of sites.

 

[labrocca]

It's not completely accurate. I have about 100 sites using adsense and they list 21. They are just indexing the sites using adbrite and adsense by their publisher id. Not that big a deal. I wonder if they make any money.