[alicebot-aiethics] Chatterbot Privacy Issues

[Robby Garner]

Hello Stephane,

I believe that you are correct about the privacy issues with chatterbots.
This is a very real concern, and at the moment, it is up to the individual
bot masters to govern themselves.

Web browsers have become more and more secure, so that the browser itself is
capable of keeping a "sniffer" from reading the cookies left from other
websites, which may contain personal information.  So this increased ability
helps protect the persons using a chatterbot. However, many people will be
using older, less secure browsers, and as you mentioned, it is very easy at
this point to provide a traceroute, or host identification. That does not
necessarily yeild an email address though.

In fact, Microsoft Internet Explorer has for some time allowed only the host
identification of "localhost 127.0.0.1" so that if the chatterbot is a java
applet for example, the only host identifications come from users of
netscape 4.x, and some other browsers that do not hide their host or IP
address information.

I have some older bots, where I was interested in where my chats were coming
from, but in recent times, this feature has become unsuccessful in
identifying the host or IP address.  My newest bot,
http://aleph.robitron.com , does not record any identifying data, but there
is a new twist in that Aleph uses the responses of past conversations as
part of new conversations.  I have placed  a notice on the entry page for
the bot, which says that "conversations are anonymous, but may be exhibited
publicly by the machine"

One ethical question is whether a privacy statement is sufficient.  However,
I have certain that no host or IP information is recorded, so this
supplements my disclaimer. Together, are these steps sufficient?

It is important in the development of bots, to be able to observe
conversations, so that the bot master can tune the software to perform
better and better. At this time, I do not feel that it is necessary to
collect information about the people who chat with it though.  If
demographic or other visitor related information is needed, there are
already web activity reporting tools available to determine the number of
repeat visitors, number of visitors from domains like .gov, .com, .fr, etc.
So in that respect, the reporting tools may present similar privacy issues
themselves.

It is also good to keep in perspective that any website you visit, most
likely records some information about you.  It is the granularity of this
information that becomes significant, and is not an isolated concern of only
chatterbots. There is a central issue of privacy on the internet in general.

Regards,

Robby Garner.



----- Original Message -----
From: Stephane MOR <stephanemor@yahoo.fr>
To: <alicebot-aiethics@list.alicebot.org>
Sent: Saturday, November 10, 2001 12:23 AM
Subject: [alicebot-aiethics] No more ethics concerns ?


Hello !

I may be mistaking, but it's been a very long time since I last received a
mail from this mailing list !

I guess most people have other things to do, but I think ethics are still an
important matter.
I realised it when building my own bot.

It came to my mind that with new features, and scripting, bots are taking a
larger and larger place in eveyone's life (everyone connected to internet).
We are now all used to using search engines, and people start getting used
to talk to bots.
Isn't there a privacy issue ? People are much more willing to give out
details of their own life / friends / family / hobbies to a bot than to a
simple website's form.
Though, those bots are still *gouverned* by someone, and their logs still go
to the same people.
It is quite easy to have Alice store "human variables" to a database.
Combined with other business specific tools, such as tracerouting, and
e-commerce tracing, one to one marketing, it could be really easy to have a
bot know a lot of useful bits of information.

Let's say FOO Ltd sells toys worldwide and has shops in each country.
Let's also say their bot (that would seem independant) asks you if you have
children, and what is their age.
It wouldn't be too hard for FOO Ltd to traceroute you, and with a bit of
logic / other knowledge (your email, etc...) to send you marketing crap
about the newest toy your kid would love to have.
Even if you would never have any web form let  you fill in those details
about you, you are still trapped.

Don't you think there should be a way to prevent this ?
Are marketers going to have more and more infos about our own personnal life
?

I am in any way willing to be "transparent" to anyone !!!

Please tell me if you feel there is an effective privacy issue, or if I am
just an awful paranoid maniac !!
If you feel like discussing about how to prevent that, or how to have people
more aware of potential risks, please go on !

Regards,
stephane