PRIVACY ALERT: Marketers may be tracking your online activity

Tweet

A recent Wall Street Journal investigation, part of their "What They Know" series of reports on online privacy issues reveals that marketers may be tracking your online activity.  Web users (especially children) are usually unaware that some of the websites they visit will install tracking software such as a "beacon" or "cookie" on their computers to track the other websites that they browse and sometimes even what they type on those sites in order to create a profile of the user which they can then sell to marketers.
Here are some of the findings as reported by the Journal::

• The study found that the nation's 50 top websites on average installed 64 pieces of tracking technology onto the computers of visitors, usually with no warning. A dozen sites each installed more than a hundred. The nonprofit Wikipedia installed none.
• Tracking technology is getting smarter and more intrusive. Monitoring used to be limited mainly to "cookie" files that record websites people visit. But the Journal found new tools that scan in real time what people are doing on a Web page, then instantly assess location, income, shopping interests and even medical conditions. Some tools surreptitiously re-spawn themselves even after users try to delete them.
• These profiles of individuals, constantly refreshed, are bought and sold on stock-market-like exchanges that have sprung up in the past 18 months.*

For more news and video from the WSJ's "What They Know" series of reports, visit their website here.  Below is a video from the series discussing how a customer is profiled on websites.


*Source:  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703940904575395073512989404.html