The Destruction of Privacy and Limits of Freedom
With the reemergence of open-source and free-to-use browsers and websites like Firefox and Napster, companies have found it too difficult to limit the free exchange of information like movies, songs, and ideas, thus losing money. Also, just having an online presence requires money to pay bills and paychecks. For a while companies solved this by placing ads on websites that matched the content on the page, but this did not always garner the attention and payoffs they wanted. Then someone discovered that they could use an aspect of the web that was introduced in the browser Netscape when it first came out, “Cookies”.
Little pieces of information, downloaded onto a user’s computer, that acted as a record of the user’s preferences and past activities on the web or certain websites. the companies then take that data stored in the cookies and correlate it to possible interests of the user. In this way, the cookies allow companies to tailor ads on a certain website to what they user may like, there-by increasing the chance that they will click on it and buy the good. The companies claim that this process makes the online experience more enjoyable since everything on a page is either informative, useful, or pleasant.
However, companies started looking for and finding new ways to gather more information about their audience. Two of these ways, “Flash cookies” and “beacons,” are very intrusive and scary with the amount of information, types of information, and ways of gathering information the employ. Flash cookies are used to re-install cookies that users have deleted and in conjunction with cookies, monitor in real time what the user is looking at online. Beacons monitor and record in real time what the user is doing on a certain web page, even where the mouse is. the types of data they record range from height and weight to area code and place of residence to detailed health status to average income. Companies that use these methods then sell the bundles of data about individual people in packages based on the data to consumer companies that place ads on web pages for the users based on the data.
Yeah, it is kinda nice for a web page to only show people stuff they are interested in rather than retirement options to teenagers and the latest funny T-shirt company to retirees. But at what cost to our personal freedom and privacy is this okay? With the rising use of these methods and not a single law passed on the subject thus far, even the most recent series of closed-door meetings organized by W3C, a proper governance of the Internet Global standards organization, is unable answer this question.
This is a scary time we are moving into. there needs to be control over these practices so we can keep one of the core principles this nation was founded on, freedom and privacy of the individual.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703940904575395073512989404.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/05/technology/privacy-advocates-and-advertisers-at-odds-over-web-tracking.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
http://www.sba.gov/content/online-advertising-law
http://business.ftc.gov/documents/bus28-advertising-and-marketing-internet-rules-road
http://www.verio.com/resource-center/business-guides/internet-law/