Tracking and Cookies

Since our latest VoiceThread assignment, I've been thinking more about Internet tracking and cookies. I found two very interesting and relevant articles on LifeHacker.

This article discusses tracking and behavioral targeting done by advertisers. If your browser enables third-party cookies, your web browsing activity is logged in order to give you more customized ads. For example, if you do a Google search for mountain bikes, you may later on see an advertisement for moutain bikes on another site you're surfing. The advertising companies are the ones storing this information, not the actual websites themselves. They also can't track personal information such as your name, address, or telephone number (unless you give out that information); only your web-browsing habits. These habits then build a "profile" of you which advertising can use to try to maximize their target demographics. I saw evidence of this recently while doing a YouTube search for a song. Under the "Featured Video" I saw a promo for ABC daytime, which had nothing to do with what I was currently searching for, but was likely there because I had visited other soap-related websites previously.

Another article dispells some of the common myths about Internet cookies. The truth is, we can't get rid of or disable cookies entirely. They are needed in order for us to log into websites and to connect different commands we send within the same sites. Also, even if you do disable cookies, other information can still be used to track your web activity, such as your IP address, browser version, and computer location. Moreover, the most commonly used cookies by advertisers are flash cookies, which cannot be as easily removed or blocked by your browers security settings.

Like I mentioned in my VoiceThread, I am a very private person. One may even say I am a bit paranoid about my web activity being tracked. After reading these articles I went ahead and disabled third-party cookies in my browser. I have started to browse using the "InPrivate" filter mode on Internet Explorer 8, which enables you to browse without your session information being stored. I also learned how to manually delete flash cookies after reading this article.

Even with these beefed-up security measures, I am still worried about my personal information being tracked and stored by websites and advertisers. I am willing to take the necessary steps to ensure my browsing privacy, but these manual steps are not what the typical Internet browser would even bother to do. I am concerned that as time goes on, people will become more lax when it comes to allowing the Internet to track their activity, which may lead to a more personalized browsing experience but also may make it much easier for that information to be used to manipulate users.

I don't expect you to be as thorough, but I do urge you to proceed with caution while surfing the web.