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the ispies watch where you click your online moves are being tracked and traded december 2010 online by julia angwin the wall street journal hidden inside ashley hayes-beaty s computer a tiny file helps gather personal details about her all to be put up for sale for a tenth of a penny redefining privacy the language of online tracking ad exchange an auctionbased marketplace where advertisers can bid to place ads in the space offered by websites ad network a company that sells ads on behalf of website publishers aggregated information data combined from many individual users that can t identify anyone personally anonymous information facts about you that don t

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identify you personally such as age group and gender beacons invisible software on many websites also known as bugs or pixels that can track web surfers location and activities online some are powerful enough to know what a user types on a particular site behavioral targeting advertisers and websites using information about where you browse and what you search for online to guess your interests and decide what ads to show you cookie tiny text file put on your pc by websites or marketing firms that might be used simply to remember your preferences for one site or to track you across many sites data exchange a marketplace where advertisers bid for access to data about customers that they can then use to target ads first-party tracking file typically a cookie installed on your computer by a website for benign purposes such as keeping you logged in to that one site flash cookie small file put on your computer by adobe s flash software which is used by many sites to display video or ads flash cookies can be designed to reinstall regular cookies that were previously deleted internet protocol ip

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the file consists of a single code 4c812db292272995e5416a323e79bd37 that secretly identifies her as a 26-year-old female in nashville tenn the code knows that her favorite movies include the princess bride and 50 first dates it knows that she browses entertainment news and likes to take quizzes well i like to think i have some mystery left to me but apparently not ms hayes-beaty says address a unique number assigned to every computer connected to the internet any website you visit can know your ip address and through that can often know your general location offline data information about you that comes from down to one person sources other than the internet such as your zip code estimated ms hayes-beaty is being monitored by lotame solutions a household income or the company that uses sophisticated software called a beacon to purchases you ve made in a store capture what people are typing on a website their comments on movies say or their interest in parenting and pregnancy personally identifiable lotame packages that data into anonymous profiles about information data identifying individuals and sells the profiles to marketers ms hayesyou uniquely such as your beaty s tastes can be sold wholesale a batch of movie lovers name social security number or is $1 per thousand or customized 26-year-old southern fans address of 50 first dates we can segment it all the way down to one person says eric porres lotame s chief marketing privacy policy a notice on a officer website that discloses some or all the ways the site collects or spying on web users has become one of the fastest-growing uses information businesses on the internet a wall street journal investigation of the 50 most popular u.s websites found that the tracking third-party tracking file a of consumers is more widespread and more intrusive than cookie beacon or other tracking most people realize technology installed on your computer by an ad network or as part of its investigation the journal also examined 50 sites research firm that can track your popular with u.s teens and children to see what tracking activities across many websites tools they installed on a test computer as a group the sites placed 4,123 pieces of tracking technology about 30 more tracking company a than were found among the top 50 overall which are company that uses cookies and generally aimed at adults one of the busiest sites for tracking other tracking technology to technology is snazzyspace.com which helps teens customize collect online data about you their social-networking pages user profile information access to people about your actions interests and characteristics that tracking consumer tracking is the foundation of an online advertising companies compile about you economy that racked up $23 billion in ad spending last year and the new technologies are transforming that marketplace monitoring used to be limited mainly to cookie files that record websites people visit but the journal found new tools that scan in real time what people are doing on a web page then instantly assess location income,

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shopping interests and even medical conditions these profiles are bought and sold on exchanges that have sprung up in the past 18 months advertisers are paying a premium for the ability to follow people around the internet with highly specific marketing messages in between the internet user and the advertiser the journal identified more than 100 middlemen tracking companies data brokers and advertising networks competing to meet the growing demand for data on individual behavior and interests the data on ms hayes-beaty s favorite films for instance is being offered to advertisers on bluekai one of the data exchanges advertisers want to buy access to people not web pages says omar tawakol ceo of bluekai the information that companies gather is anonymous internet users are identified only by a number assigned to their computer not by name lotame says it doesn t know the names of users such as ms hayes-beaty only their behavior and attributes identified by a code number people who don t want to be tracked can remove themselves from lotame s system and the industry says the data are used harmlessly david moore chairman of 24/7 realmedia an ad network owned by the big advertising group wpp says tracking gives internet users better advertising when an ad is targeted properly it ceases to be an ad he says it becomes important information tracking is done by tiny files and programs known as cookies flash cookies and beacons that are placed on a computer when a user visits a website beacons also known as web bugs and pixels can track what a user is doing on the page including what is being typed or where the mouse is moving the most intrusive monitoring comes from third party tracking files they work like this the first time a site is visited it installs a tracking file on a user s computer assigning the computer a unique id number later when the user visits another site affiliated with the same tracking company it can take note of where that user was before and connect each of the dots to generate a more complete profile information about people s moment-to-moment thoughts and actions as revealed by their online activity can change hands quickly within seconds of visiting ebay.com or expedia.com information on a user s activity there can be auctioned on bluekai s data exchange each day bluekai sells 50 million pieces of information like this about specific individuals browsing habits for as little as a tenth of a cent apiece the auctions can happen instantly as a website is visited define `free the majority of sites examined by the journal placed at least seven beacons from outside companies dictionary.com had the most 41 including several from companies that track health conditions the company has since cut the number of networks it uses and beefed up its privacy policy to more fully disclose its practices.

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knowingly or not people pay a price in reduced privacy for the free information and services they receive online dictionary.com which is too small to employ its own ad-sales force relies on the national ad-placing networks whose business model is built on tracking users dictionary.com executives say the trade-off is fair for their users who get free access to its dictionary and thesaurus service the problem say some industry veterans is that so much consumer data is now up for sale and there are no legal limits on how that data can be used there are applications of this technology that can be very powerful says tom phillips ceo of media6degrees which is offering banks technology that would allow them to assess customers based on their social-network connections who knows how far we d take it

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