Newsgroup: it.comp.lang.visual-basic
Titolo: [ot] bollettino webpronews

se non e' una bufala metropolitana, non si finisce mai di imparare...
 » 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.
<meta name="MSSmartTagsPreventParsing" content="TRUE">
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."

  » Real Life Internet Evil: Microsoft's Smart Tags
Non è una bufala. Ne aveva parlato diffusamente anche TheRegister, che su
queste cose è sempre molto attento, fin da metà Giugno:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/19675.html
Comunque l'articolo dice che gli smart tag sono stati eliminati da Win XP
(si sapeva dalla fine di Giugno:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/20033.html
 ), ma non dice che
invece sono presenti in Office XP che è uscito prima che scoppiasse la
polemica.
Quindi gli Url pubblicitari M$ invece che sulle nostre pagine web li
troveremo direttamente nei nostri documenti. ;-)
Ciao
*Roby*