Once collected, personal data is bought and sold as a commodity by a growing assortment of players. Online profiling is a complex concept that is subject to different definitions. Evidence of the growing market for detailed personal profiles is rampant on the Internet. Clickstream data is a potentially rich source of information about your habits of association, speech, and commerce. Clickstream data, which may or may not be enough to identify a specific individual, is captured at various points in the network and available for reuse and disclosure.
Online tracking has tremendous commercial potential.
Generally, consumers see profiling related to Internet shopping as beneficial if they know what information is being collected and can exercise control over how it is used. Consumers are generally concerned over profiling, however, when they either do not expect or consent to data collection. Direct marketing, personalized and targeted with an unprecedented precision, may benefit individual consumers and the online market on the whole. However great the potential benefits of online tracking, they remain incomparable to the grave implications of Internet users' loss of privacy. Designed for the benign purpose of enabling Web sites to recognize a repeat visitor and respond accordingly, cookies were quickly adopted to facilitate the tracking of specific individuals' activities in order to customize content and advertisement.