In the past I’ve been guilty of dismissing articles about cyberstalking, profiling, privacy breaches, etc, as pieces of sensationalist journalism. I’m the type of person who’ll happily spend the weekend uploading photos to Facebook, leaving comments on other people’s whiteboards, joining the ‘Margaret Mountford (from The Apprentice) Appreciation Society’ and taking quizzes to determine ‘Which 30 Rock Character are you most like’? And all without a second thought because I’m happy that I’ve selected the highest level of privacy settings; only the chosen few, ‘my friends’ will get to see how sad I can be on a Saturday night!
But what about the areas of the Internet that you can’t control, as pointed out by Ian Spiegelman in his slightly chilling blog piece The Government, and our Advertisers, Are Well Aware of our Fetishes? Certainly made me think about the type of image that my online ‘clicking’ behaviour might project. A casual ‘click’ into Gawker over lunch, or Digital Spy on a Sunday afternoon, or even a wrong turn onto PerezHilton…argh, it doesn’t bear thinking about!
The American Congress are talking about establishing a ‘do-not-track-list’ which would at least give us more control over being monitored online.
About time too – let’s be a bit more savvy about who we allow into our virtual lives. I mean, seriously, what would George Orwell think?
The Library of Digress 
It’s certainly worrying, and something I never considered before studying for my MSc. Most people are blissfully unaware of the fact that their internet use can be tracked. Implementation of a ‘do not track’ list, would be a definite step forward in terms of privacy and also of awareness.
BT have recently been criticised for running a pilot scheme whereby a ‘random’ group of their broadband customers had their internet use tracked and stored by BT. BT had not asked these customers for their consent and have tried to justify their actions by claiming that the findings were kept completely anonymous.
When we can’t even trust our internet service providers to respect our privacy, perhaps the whole thing is even more Orwellian than we know!
I remember how worried I got at one point when I was having to research an anti terrorism device for planes…searching for “bomb”, “plane”, “terrorist” etc is pretty much certain to be tripping some sensors somewhere!
Or last week, when I was searching (for work) for info on gambling tax havens in Costa Rica etc…
As it is, personally, as a Virgin Internet customer, I am NOT happy about Phorm being installed against my will, to report back to a 3rd party about my browsing habits.: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/29/phorm_roundup/
How dare BT track the behaviour of customers. It reminded me of an article I read recently which referred to high street retailers attempting to track our physical buying behaviour using RFIDs – see ‘RFID systems, standards and privacy within libraries’ – http://www.emeraldinsight.com/Insight/viewContentItem.do?contentType=Article&hdAction=lnkhtml&contentId=1621417&dType=SUB&history=false
And Jennie, you better keep an eye out for the Men in Black – your innocent keyword searches probably mean that your IP address has now been added onto some government database!
Seriously though, it’s just not on! And what makes it even worse is that the majority of us don’t even know we’re being ‘watched’!
I have to say though, from a marketing point of view, this is all very lucrative information from an advertising point of view!
If I wanted to it meant in my previous job that I could undertake online advertising based on the online behaviour of our target market…..I could choose to advertise on sites where people frequented following showing an interest in online information about a new career or distance learning. I could target people who had visited our website and not bought with one message and those who visited put something in their basket but abandoned it then not bought with another marketing message – I know amazon do this A LOT.
So from a marketeers piont of view we can get very very targeted and from a consumer point of view surely this means that you receive very relevant advertising messages, ones that you might actually be interested in?
I have to say because of my experience I clear my cookies etc most of the time and I am much more aware of my privacy and tracking but I can see the benefits on a professional level. What does scare me is the unauthorised tracking that is discussed where you are almost “marked” as someone to keep and eye on. That is what scares me most. But at the same I can see the sophisticated advertising benefits :O)