Page 88 - Privacy in a Cyber Age Policy and Practice

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The Privacy Merchants

A. Corporate Surveillance, Tracking, Data Mining, and Profiling

Most informed citizens probably know by now that corporations collect
information about them, but they may well be unaware of the extent and
scope of the invasions of privacy that are now widespread. Many may be
aware of tracking tools referred to as “cookies,” which are installed on
one’s computer by visited websites. They are used to identify the person
and to remember his or her preferences. Some people protect themselves
from such tracking by employing software that allows them to clear cook-
ies from a computer. However, corporations have recently begun to install
“supercookies” that are very difficult to detect, and if removed, secretly
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reinstall themselves. As one report concluded: “This means that privacy-
sensitive consumers who ‘toss’ their HTTP cookies to prevent tracking or
remain anonymous are still being uniquely identified online by advertising
companies.” 2
Major cell phone and mobile technology companies offer services that
allow lovers, ex-spouses, lawyers, or anyone else to find out where a person
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is—and track their movements—by using their cell phones’ GPS capabilities.
A German politician who inquired about location storage information
discovered that over a six-month period, his longitude and latitude had
been recorded over 35,000 times. 4
There are two kinds of corporations that keep track of what Internet
users buy, read, visit, drink, and who they call, e-mail, and date, among
other things. Some merely track users’ activity on their sites as part of
regular business; recording purchases and viewed products helps them
increase sales. This is true for nearly every major online retailer. Other
corporations make shadowing Internet users—and keeping very detailed
dossiers on them—their main line of business. (I will refer to them as pri-
vacy merchants. They sell information to whoever pays the required price.