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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."
Richard Lowe Jr. is the webmaster of Internet Tips And
Secrets at
http://www.internet-tips.net
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