QDOS measures (digital) popularity and tries to sell (real) privacy
January 18, 2008 8:47 pmWith this stories comes a challenge: there are some photographs of my human online, when she was about 15 years old, and lying in a bikini on an Egypt beach. For the first one that does find those, I’ll - honestly - answer a truth or dare question*. Do keep in mind, the ones at the French swimming pool do not count!
As most ’secure your - internet - data’ companies try to draw your attention with scary stories such as enormous data loss by governments, data leaks, ’stolen’ bank accounts, stalkers and the password to your favourite on-line pr0n resource - which also happens to be your work e-mail pass - hacked, the people over at Garlik found a better approach: trigger people’s curiosity and, especially, their ego’s.
So what’s the deal? You give the people at Garlik some basic information - which everybody can find out about you - such as facebook account, homepage, flickr account, etc. They in turn tell you how popular and active you are on the internet, how much influence you have and how individual they think you are. Put a score on those four requirements, and you have your QDOS score. With a QDOS of 5393, I rank above Anne Geddes and Philip Rosedale, yet right under the 14th Dalai Lama and Paula Abdul. And you, be it your human or your avatar or both? Do a little ‘vanity search’ and find out if you are sandwished between Pamela Anderson (Q6222) and Paris Hilton (Q8439)? ;)
Oh, and it must be said, that although it takes to register before you can look up your score, they do not really bug you with ads for whatever privacy they might sell.
“We’re trying to find a way for the consumer to take ownership of their digital status,” said Tom Ilobe, chief executive of Garlik. “Businesses are doing it pretty well, but the consumer is in danger of being left out of the game. Their information is in so many other people’s hands.”Fear, he said, does not appear to motivate the average Internet surfer: When the British government lost two discs full of citizens’ benefits information in November, the incident grabbed a lot of headlines; meanwhile, panicked inquiries with banks from customers about the potential for financial loss were no more than normal, Ilobe maintains.
But curiosity, playfulness and competitiveness do seem to light a spark under people. And those elements are built into the process of looking up your QDOS number - and those of your friends and favourite celebrities.
“Consumers aren’t sufficiently scared,” Ilobe said, returning to his fear theory.
Even in the absence of hyperventilating headlines, he said, “A lot of decisions are being made about us with information people find out on the Internet - people are deciding whether to date me, whether to work for me, what kind of person I am.“
“What we’re trying to do is get people engaged with their digital status. If we as a company can get millions of people engaged, they will tell us what services they want in identity protection,” he said.
I do wonder why the hell ruth I rank that bad on ‘individuality’. For Linden’s sake! Name me one other Vint Falken that lives in a virtual world, made up out of bits and bytes and meshes. Pffff.
* Loki, Dalien and Veyron can’t play. All three they already know of the existence of the directory they are in. I think.
18 Responses to “QDOS measures (digital) popularity and tries to sell (real) privacy”
Hmm.. I was able to find your humans’ name, and at least two picture collections online, one at a dedicated domain, and another but no pics of you in bikini yet. Keep on searching..
You’re going strong. :d Yet that’s an easy one as it’s a photoblog. It’s not there, though. It’s way older. (and not on this server) The bikini pics are scanned prints from negative, not DSLR ones! ;)
Je te bats en individualité, maigre consolation…
http://secondlifesofian.blogspot.com/2008/01/my-iqdos.html
Je suis tellement individuelle que personne ne me connais.
Pour vivre heureux vivons cachés, il parait.
Au fait, superbe ton blog, je me régale:)
thats a fun game Vint ^^
http://qdos.com/search?searchname=CodeBastard+Redgrave&searchpostcode=&x=&y=
and im not really finished entering my links.. wonder if i can beat Paris “thats hot” Hilton…. LMAO
Hey CodeBastard and Vint,
How do you manage to add you links in ‘Where are you on the internet?’
I can’t add anything here, it’s not fair:(
I could maybe increase my IQDOS by 10%;)
@Sofian you just need to register using your email adress, once logged in you can add links to the most popular social networks, and theres also a generic Website option for links, and Homepage for your home blog or whatever is your main site.
@CodeBastard, I register using my email but I can only add some links proposed in a short list, I have no possibility to add more Websites…
For example how can I add SLProfiles if it is not in the list…?
Very often I feel stupid with Internet, this is another confirmation:(
Sofian, I added my SLP profile under the listing of “homepage”… That is generic and truthfull, so why not.
My QDOS ended up at Q2698… lame as expected of course.
Funniest thing is, the human me, who has 0 web presence, ended up with a QDOS of Q1157…
Guess just being registered at Garlik is enough to make you visible…
Thanks Mylena for the feed-back!
Actually I finally figured out how to add my websites and I reached…Q9515!
see http://secondlifesofian.blogspot.com/2008/01/my-new-iqdos.html
It seems that the more websites you input in the list, the higher your score, even if you hardly visit them!
Good to know, who will beat the record of 11199?
Entertaining site indeed…but I’m taking the results with a pich of salt….
Tried with my real name (and, like Mylena, I have no web presence with that name, precisely because I care about my privacy), and I come up with a popularity bar that’s higher than CodeBastardRedgrave’s (clearly impossible!!!!). Unless it’s to be read right to left, which would be unusual. So I’d be really interested in knowing the criteria they use….
A good way to list all the digital networks you belong to in one place, though…
Um, any chance that I could repost this without the spelling mistakes? Pretty pretty please?
There are multiple things which make their site look extremely lame to me.
I am very curious what their real agenda is…
….On the other hand, the team of Garlik seems to include Tim-Berners Lee himself.
Gee. now I am totally lost.
I figured I’d drop them an email and ask whether the things I saw were actually part of the experiment or it is that … uhm… there is other explanation :-)
We’ll see.
@ Dalien
This site (QDOS, not Vint’s!) does not look lame, it is lame!
Not only I reach Q9515, but I am not included in the top 20 between Maurice Allais (Q9466) and Madonna (Q9566)…
Scoring is totally distorted by the number of sites you declare, even if you do not visit these sites!
They really have to fix some bugs…
@Sofian: absolutely - I did mean the QDOS :))))
Ranking could be recalculated on a periodic basis, not Just In Time - so what you saw could be a design decision.
I was more concerned with some more basic things on a site that deals with the delicate issues of identity.
But before writing more about it - I’ll give them the benefit of doubt and time to respond to my mail - maybe the things I noticed are intentional design decisions as well.
Dalien, and in the mean time, you’ll just continue making us all curious? :D
Yes :) Well, actually at first I thought to make a contest (with a bounty and all! srs bsns!! :) to get the public to try those out and see, but I fell asleep before finishing the post, and when I woke up, I read upabout the garlik - and decided to give a chance before making the noise.
There’s nothing supermajor or advanced really there, just something that made me shrug.
Care to comment?