Google Offers $100 to Let Them Track Your Web Browsing via Black Box

Google now offers $100 for people who let them track their Web browsing with a black box called the Screenwise Data Collector. It's a deal through a company called Knowledge Networks, and the Screenwise data collection program is accepting emails right now for people who want to sign up when the program launches, tech blog Ars Technica reported. For those not interested in a hardware hookup watching your surf habits, Goole will give you five bucks to install a browser extension that will perform a similar task. You get a $5 Amazon gift card for signing up for that program, and another $5 card for every three months you stay in the program after that.

If you sign up with Knowledge Networks, you can get the black box installed as your router, and it watches any device connected to it (except game consoles). Sign up and you get $100 plus $20 for every month you do it up to a year. The program is accepting 2,500 Knowledge Network members. Google has made plenty of headlines recently for their new privacy policy, and social network Path recently had a bad publicity episode where it was revealed they were tracking phone users' info without telling them. Not to mention the Carrier IQ fiasco last month where it was discovered a hidden program was doing the same thing to millions of unsuspecting mobile phone users.

So what will Google do with this handy info they are collecting? Sell it of course. One of the disclaimers in the agreement notes Google will share the info with third-parties like universities and advertisers. It won't even be stripped of your personal info, so people signing up for this are really putting themselves out there. But, that's why they disclose that info at the beginning, so people know what they're getting into. Any takers? Tell us in the comments if you'd ever sign up for such a deal.