If you use the Internet, your privacy is under attack. Every time you view a Web page with an advertising banner, submit your name to a site, or enter registration data into software that works with the Internet, the information you provide can be catalogued, compiled, correlated with your movements throughout the Internet, and sold to any number of willing buyers. We'll explain what you can do to preserve your privacy.
Personal data: a big business
Before we discuss how your personal information is gathered and what you can do about it, you should understand the reasons why this data is being collected in the first place. Who is after your personal data? And why is it valuable to them? To find out, you need look no farther than the Web sites of the many advertising firms that post banner ads throughout the Inter net. DoubleClick, a huge online advertising network, reported the following in its 1998 annual report:
"DART (Dynamic Advertising Reporting and Targeting) insures that advertisers reach their ideal consumers from among the tens of millions on the Internet. It can target prospective customers by dozens of characteristics, including geographic region, LANguage, and business."
By reading individual users' IP (Internet Protocol) addresses, DoubleClick's dart program anonymously delivers targeted advertising to consumers and then provides comprehensive campaign reports to monitor the effectiveness of the ads. For example, dart allowed IBM's corporate recruiters to reach college students nationwideââ,¬"with messages targeted specifically to each college.
Naviant, another Web marketing company, claims even greater knowledge of consumers' personal information:
"At the heart of e-List Services is Naviant's High Tech Household File, the largest and only 100-percent-verified resource for today's most dynamic buying market of Internet-enabled households. With access to over 17.5 million households already, and hundreds of thousands more coming on file each month, it's the only source you need to meet your future marketing and targeting possibilities with precision."
In short, these Internet advertising firms pride themselves on being able to collect precise, detailed information about you. They may then sell this information to other companies, use it to identify you as you browse the Web, or use it to select what sorts of advertising to display on your screen. (In the example of IBM mentioned above, the ad agency could even recognise college students and cozy up to them by customising ads with their schools' colors, symbols, or mascots.)
Advertisers will pay more for space if they believeââ,¬"rightly or wronglyââ,¬"that they're more likely to show up on the screens of potential customers. Unfortunately, this means that someoneââ,¬"either the advertiser, the site, or the agency that delivers the adsââ,¬"needs to know sensitive information about you: your age, where you live, your spending habits, your marital status, whether you have kids, and other information you'd probably feel uncomfortable revealing to strangers.
excelant article
one addtional point:
one way to prevent the reading of email in outlook and outlook express from triggering the html bugs, etc is to
1) download your email
2) disable your internet connection
3) read all your email
4) enable your internet connection