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Internet Spying You

Constantly, companies track people's online activity through cookies, beacons, and other technologies to build detailed profiles containing personal information. These profiles can reveal sensitive details like health issues and are compiled and sold to advertisers. While this level of data collection is currently legal, privacy advocates argue that laws have not kept up with advancing technology and the potential for abuse.

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86 views5 pages

Internet Spying You

Constantly, companies track people's online activity through cookies, beacons, and other technologies to build detailed profiles containing personal information. These profiles can reveal sensitive details like health issues and are compiled and sold to advertisers. While this level of data collection is currently legal, privacy advocates argue that laws have not kept up with advancing technology and the potential for abuse.

Uploaded by

sunflower14
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Vale Middle School Reading Article

THE INTERNET IS SPYING ON YOU

Instructions:

Read the following article carefully and make notes in the margin as you read.
Your notes should include:

o Comments that show that you understand the article. (A summary or statement of the main
idea of important sections may serve this purpose.)
o Questions you have that show what you are wondering about as you read.
o Notes that differentiate between fact and opinion.
o Observations about how the writer’s strategies (organization, word choice, perspective,
support) and choices affect the article.
Your margin notes are part of your score for this assignment.

Student _________________________________

Class Period _____________________________

THE INTERNET IS SPYING ON YOU Notes on my thoughts,


Every time you go online, sophisticated data miners are tracking your every reactions and questions as I
move. What do they know about you? read:

How frequently am I followed online?


Constantly. Your computer leaves a unique digital trail every time you visit a
website, post a comment on a blog, or add a photo to your Facebook wall. A
growing number of companies follow that trail to assemble a profile of you and your
affinities. These profiles can contain shocking levels of detail—including your age,
income, shopping habits, health problems, sexual proclivities, and ZIP code—right
down to the number of rooms in your house and the number of people in your
family. Although trackers don’t identify their subjects by name, the data they
compile is so extensive that “you can find out who an individual is without it,” says
Maneesha Mithal of the Federal Trade Commission.

How does the technology work?


The moment you land on a website, it installs a unique electronic code on your hard
drive. Owners of websites originally placed “cookies,” the simplest such codes, on
computers for users’ convenience, in order to remember things like the contents of
online shopping carts. But a cookie placed by one site can also serve as a tracking
device that allows marketers to identify an individual computer and follow its path
on every Web visit. It’s like a clerk who sells you a pair of jeans at one store, then
trails you around the mall, recording every store you visit and every item of clothing
you try on. “Beacons” are super-cookies that record even computer keystrokes and
mouse movements, providing another layer of detail. “Flash cookies” are installed
when a computer user activates Flash technology, such as a YouTube video,
embedded on a site. They can also reinstall cookies that have been removed. Such
“persistent cookies,” says Marc Rotenberg of the Electronic Privacy Information
Center, make it “virtually impossible for users to go online without being tracked and
profiled.”
Template developed by North Medford High School staff
Vale Middle School – Reading Article
THE INTERNET IS SPYING ON YOU

Notes on my thoughts,
Who’s doing the spying? reactions and questions as I
Marketers, advertisers, and those whose businesses depend on them. Most read:
websites install their own cookies and beacons, both to make site navigation easier
and to gather user information. (Wikipedia is a rare exception.) But third parties—
advertisers and the networks that place online ads, such as Google and iAds—
frequently pay site hosts to install their own tracking technology. Beacons are even
sometimes planted without the knowledge of the host site. Comcast, for example,
installed Flash cookies on computers visiting its website after it accepted
Clearspring Technologies’ free software for displaying slide shows. Visitors who
clicked on a slide show at Comcast.com wound up loading Clearspring’s Flash
cookies onto their hard drives, which Comcast said it had never authorized.

How is personal data used?


It’s collected and sold by companies like Clearspring. Such information can be sold
in large chunks—for example, an advertiser might pay $1 for 1,000 profiles of movie
lovers—or in customized segments. An apparel retailer might buy access to 18-
year-old female fans of the Twilight movie series who reside in the Sunbelt. “We
can segment it all the way down to one person,” says Eric Porres of Lotame, which
sells these profiles. Advertisers use the profiles to deliver individualized ads that
follow users to every site they visit. Julia Preston, a 32-year-old software designer
from Austin, recently saw how this works firsthand when she started seeing lots of
Web ads for fertility treatments. She had recently researched uterine disorders
online. “It’s unnerving,” she says.

Is all this snooping legal?


So far, yes. While an e-commerce site can’t sell to third parties the credit card
numbers it acquires in the course of its business, the legality of various tracking
technologies—and the sale of the personal profiles that result—has never been
tested in court. Privacy advocates say that’s not because there aren’t abundant
abuses, but because the law hasn’t kept pace with advancing technology. “The
relevant laws,” says Lauren Weinstein of People for Internet Responsibility, an
advocacy group, “are generally so weak—if they exist at all—that it’s difficult to file
complaints.”

Can you avoid revealing yourself online?


Aside from abandoning the Internet altogether, there’s virtually no way to evade
prying eyes. Take the case of Ashley Hayes-Beaty, who learned just how exposed
she was when The Wall Street Journal shared what it had learned about her from a
data miner. Hayes-Beaty’s computer use identified her as a 26-year-old female
Nashville resident who counts The Princess Bride and 50 First Dates among her
favorite movies, regularly watches Sex and the City, keeps current on entertainment
news, and enjoys taking pop-culture quizzes. That litany, which advertisers can buy
for about one-tenth of a cent, constitutes what Hayes-Beaty calls an “eerily precise”
consumer profile. “I like to think I have some mystery left to me,” says Hayes-Beaty,
“but apparently not.”

How to fight back against data miners


There are ways to minimize your exposure to data miners. One of the most effective
is to disrupt profile-building by clearing your computer browser’s cache and deleting

Template developed by North Medford High School staff


Vale Middle School – Reading Article
THE INTERNET IS SPYING ON YOU

all cookies at least once a week. In addition, turning on the “private browsing” Notes on my thoughts,
feature included in most popular Web browsers will block tracking technologies from reactions and questions as I
installing themselves on your machine. For fees ranging from $9.95 to $10,000, read:
companies like ReputationDefender can remove your personal information from up
to 90 percent of commercial websites. But it’s basically impossible to eradicate
personal information, such as property records and police files, from government
databases. “There’s really no solution now, except abstinence” from the Internet,
says Lt. Col. Greg Conti, a computer science professor at West Point. “And if you
choose not to use online tools, you’re really not a member of the 21st century.”

Source: The Week.com, Sept. 10, 2010

1. Describe a danger associated with being spied upon via the internet.

2. In two sentences, summarize the message the author is trying to convey by writing this article.

Template developed by North Medford High School staff


Vale Middle School – Reading Article
THE INTERNET IS SPYING ON YOU

3. Discuss two instances in which you may be tracked via the internet. If you do not have internet at home,
use school instances as your examples.

4. Choose three vocabulary terms that you had not mastered prior to reading this article. Explain how you
determined the meaning of these terms based on the selection rather than using a dictionary.

Template developed by North Medford High School staff


Reading Work Sample Assessment
THE INTERNET IS SPYING ON YOU

5. Discuss what you might do to protect your privacy.

6. Does it disturb you that you being followed on the internet? Reflect.

Template developed by North Medford High School staff

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