Page 90 - Privacy in a Cyber Age Policy and Practice

THE PRIVACY MERCHANTS 77

individual private trait that a user is not willing to disclose (e.g., political
or religious affiliation).” 11
Some individuals may think that they can protect themselves from
tracking and dossiers by using pseudonyms and multiple “mailboxes.”
However, some companies have developed software to match pseudonyms
used on message boards and blogs with real names and personal e-mail
12
addresses. The subjects of this tracking—who are unaware that their
anonymity has been stripped—include people who use online pseudonyms
13
to discuss sensitive topics such as mental illness. As Eli Pariser reports,
“Search for a word like ‘depression’ on Dictionary.com, and the site installs
up to 223 tracking cookies and beacons on your computer so that other
14
websites can target you with antidepressants.” Although the privacy of
medical records is protected by law, but “visits” to medical websites or chat
groups are not afforded the same protection.
Many companies claim that they do not collect names or that they
disassociate names from dossiers. However, at least some companies keep
a database of names on file. One such company, RapLeaf, states that it does
not share its subjects’ names with advertisers; but an investigation found
that it does link those names to “extraordinarily intimate databases [. . .]
by tapping voter-registration files, shopping histories, social-networking
15
activities and real estate records.” And although the company indeed
refrains from specifically sharing names with its clients, it did share person-
ally identifiable information with them, such as unique Facebook account
numbers that can be traced back to the account holder’s name. 16
Privacy advocates have sharply objected to the government’s use of deep
packet inspection (DPI)—a powerful tool used to analyze the contents of
communications transmitted over the Internet—in large part because it
is much more intrusive than merely tracking who is communicating with
whom. (The difference is akin to reading letters versus examining the out-
side of an envelope to see who sent the letter and to whom it is addressed.)
Now, private companies are offering to perform DPI for Internet service
providers to facilitate targeted advertising. 17
In 2010, Facebook became the most-visited website in the United
18
19
States, and it neared 700 million users in June 2011. Facebook users
put great amounts of personal information, including their religious and
political views, educational and professional background, interests, as well
as photos and videos of themselves, on their individual profiles. Most impor-
tant, unlike most other websites where individuals employ usernames or
pseudonyms, Facebook is designed for people to use their real names. This
makes it vastly more valuable to data miners who seek to gather personally
identifiable information in order to assemble dossiers on individuals. Fur-
thermore, each individual’s profile is linked to the profiles of their “friends,”