Is Anything on the Internet Private?
By: Rose Tibbott
Tags: Search, Privacy, Information, Internet, History Of Technology

One major issue in online advertising today is privacy. This issue has continued to escalate over the years as technology advances. Companies are creating new ways to use consumers’ personal search history to target their advertisements. According to Huaiqing Wang, Chen Wang, and Matthew K.O. Lee, “The invasion of privacy on the Internet is commonly regarded as the unauthorized collection, disclosure, or other use of personal information.”

David Evans discusses this concept in the Joural of Economic perspectives, in which algorithms track consumers’ data and then match them to related advertisements (Evans). Through this technique, an advertising intermediary can also infer a person’s gender, age, career, likes, dislikes and more (Evans). This is a major privacy concern as most of this information is not directly given to the website. It is gathered through search history and generalizations.

Wang, Lee, and Wang discuss a survey by Equifax and Harris Associates, which concluded that over two-thirds of internet users find privacy to be a very important issue (Wang, Lee, Wang). Many times, a website tracks users’ personal data without notice or consent from the user. This is known as improper monitoring and collecting (Wang, Lee, Wang).

Through the use of cookies, a website can track how often a person visits a site, where they view the site from, and what they do on the site. This can lead to an improper analysis and transfer of information, in which a website makes conclusions from a person’s browsing data without acknowledgment. This information is then sold to other businesses, and used to advertise to their target market (Wang, Lee, Wang).

Its clear that online target marketing is beneficial to the company, but some argue that it can be beneficial to the user as well. The algorithms provide users with content that they are interested in. This could lead a user to find information that they are looking for, or even a product that they love. Avi Goldfarb and Catherine Tucker discuss some of the benefits for the advertiser. When users’ search history is tracked, less ad impressions are wasted, and more are used on people that will more likely be influenced (Goldfarb, Tucker).

Goldfarb and Tucker also studied the effect of the EU Privacy Electronic Communications Directory. This act limited a company’s ability to collect and use a person’s browsing data. The study showed that online advertising became much less successful after the law was enacted, which could potentially be a disadvantage to the company and the user as well (Goldfarb, Tucker).

Privacy on the internet is a huge issue, and users should not feel comfortable with different websites using their search data and information without consent. The main problem with online privacy is acknowledgment from the company. Many websites do not warn users about the information collected when they browse their website, and do not inform the users if that information is published or used by other businesses. Generalizations are made from users’ search history that are most likely untrue. This information could end up being used in studies to make false conclusions.

It is a violation of privacy for a company to track a users’ information without acknowledging it, which is described above as improper monitoring and collecting of information. Once the data is collected it can be used to control what advertisements people see online. Although there are a few benefits to these techniques, it is safer for people to find information and products on their own, than be targeted by a company online.