When the Federal Trade Commission got wise to online profiling late last year, RealNetworks backed off. Still, online profiling is spreading. The granddaddy of this infant field is a firm called DoubleClick, which uses cookies implanted in computers to track a computer user's every move and pump it into a giant database. Then it sells the Web-surfing habits and preferences to marketers. This is far more efficient than deploying people with clipboards to corral you for a survey.
People today are too busy or too smart to answer even the first question.
DoubleClick and outfits like it have found a way to survey you on the sly. Scary stuff, this is. On Feb. 1, the Center for Democracy and Technology, a Washington-based nonprofit watchdog group against technology for invasions of privacy and freedom, unleashed a nationwide online campaign to try to make sure the DoubleClick cookies crumble. For starters, it rips open the veil of secrecy. Sesame Street - bristle with DoubleClick cookies.