Reading the title of the article many of you might be wondering what this article is all about! Some of those knowledgeable people out there might even have understood bits and pieces of the title but still not very clear about it. So let me tell you what this article is all about. Reading the first half of the title you would guess that it’s something related to the way some company collects data about its customers or even its employees. The second half can now be clearly related to the first half and now it may make sense to some of you.
This article essentially talks about the concerns related to how big companies like Google, Facebook and also online shopping websites like Amazon, eBay, etc. collect and use data from users that visit their website. All this data is being used by these companies for targeted advertisements, search results customization and other such things. I have also heard of some people claiming that when one visits an airline’s website for the first time and don’t book a ticket, the next time when they visit the website with in the same day but not immediately, the prices are inflated and this keeps on happening. This fact may be true for some airlines but as far as my bookings are concerned, somehow, I have never faced this kind of issue.
How this is done?
All this is done by simply using a small text file that the website stores on your computer or mobile phones when you visit them. This file has some unique identification number that these websites then use to keep track of the users that are using their website. These websites also uses the cache that’s stored on your computer or mobile phone to customize results every time you visit these websites.
The best example is that of Google search. Whenever you perform a search on Google, a small text file is set via you browser on your computer. This cookie is then used to keep track of what search you have made in the past and based on the results what website you visited. This information is then used by Google Search for the next time you make a search. The results that you see are not the results that will be displayed to a first time user, it will rank search results based on the previous search results you visited, the website that you frequently visit over the Internet and all such information.
What is the concern?
While many of you out there will feel that this is okay and that this will actually help you reach what you want easily. While this may be true to some extent the other side of the story is still hidden. There are huge privacy concerns associated with this kind of behavior of various websites. Some of you will argue that leaking out this kind of information is okay and there is no privacy concern associated with it. For such type of people, let me bring out another case and this time its most peoples favorite social network, Facebook. In Facebook’s case the threat to privacy is partially similar and also a step more alarming than that of Google.
Most of you might know the fact that all the revenue that Facebook generates is based on the advertisements that are displayed on their website. What many of you don’t know is how Facebook gets the right advertisement to you at the right time. This is also done with the help cookies and with help of Facebook’s so called partner websites that use Facebook’s resources in some or the other way.
Facebook similar to Google stores a cookie on your computer when you visit it. This cookie is then used to track the websites that you use (Yes, even those websites that you secretly visit and don’t want anyone to know about.) This data is then stored and used by Facebook to select the right type of advertisement to be displayed to you. A similar strategy is used by Facebook about using the content that you post on it to display advertisements targeting you.
Now when you look at it from a point where you can see that someone is seeing all that you do over the internet; right from the website you visit to a product you order online. This is something similar to you being spied upon by a real person so that a company can sell its product t you based on your mood and place. This may sound creepy to many of you! What more, all this data is being stored at various data centers of these companies which will then be used to enable these websites to serve better advertisements to us!
What you fail to realize is that this data that is being stored by these websites is something that can be used to efficiently to know details about you and your behavior. Also many more details can be extracted from these databases that can be used by various Government agencies to spy on us. Thankfully as of now these websites are totally against spying of their users and hence we can feel safe.
Though there are many negative points about such kind of activities that take place there is very little that we can do about it. All these little steps will be discussed by me in a following article.
– Anish Kumar
0 Comments