For reasons only people far smarter about journalism will be able to fathon, the Wall Street Journal broke a Big Time story on Friday afternoon. I'm counting a total -- so far -- of seven stories that are described as the first in a series that all about how your online life is an open book that's bought, sold, resold, parsed and aggregated. Dear, we aren't talking just about cookies and milk. The WSJ's crack team has found beacons and trackers, bits of code that are recording and broadcasting what you type and click. --Brother, Sister, we are toast.
By the way, the WSJ opened a unique, easily consumable URL for the series: http://online.wsj.com/wtk
Broad overview: WSJ studied fifty websites that draw about forty percent of all the page views on the internet. Those fifty sites dropped 1,380 tracking files on the test computer. The worst offender? Dictionary.com. The purest site: Wikipedia which dropped zero files.
The journal didn't find any trackers that identified, by name, a computer user, but, honstly, the name is all but inconsequential when put into the perspective of what is being collected. Here's how the story opens:
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.
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," "50 First Dates" and "10 Things I Hate About You." It knows she enjoys the "Sex and the City" series. It knows 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 said when told what that snippet of code reveals about her. "The profile is eerily correct."
Ms. Hayes-Beaty is being monitored by Lotame Solutions Inc., a New York company that uses sophisticated software called a "beacon" to capture what people are typing on a website—their comments on movies, say, or their interest in parenting and pregnancy. Lotame packages that data into profiles about individuals, without determining a person's name, and sells the profiles to companies seeking customers. Ms. Hayes-Beaty's tastes can be sold wholesale (a batch of movie lovers is $1 per thousand) or customized (26-year-old Southern fans of "50 First Dates").
"We can segment it all the way down to one person," says Eric Porres, Lotame's chief marketing officer.
Mr. Porres isn't making a confession. He's bragging. A lot.
I've written before that I completely understand, and in a very sick way, sympathize with the businesses that are on the cutting edge of this sort of practice. I can even walk over to the opinion that, if sponsors / advertisers have a very precise understanding of what turns me on, then I'm going to see less random stuff and more stuff that hits the sweet spot of my interest. And I'm OK with that.
What I believe the real problem is comes down to two points:
1. I don't remember anyone ever asking me is it's OK for them to monitor me so closely. And that's not really OK.
2. Furthermore, I don't remember anyone asking me if its OK to drop executables onto my hard drive. I paid good money for my disk. I am constantly protecting and grooming my disks to protect them from the vandels and to ensure they are working as well as possible. I also pay good money to Comcast for the bandwidth I consume.
So, what it comes down to is the must vaunted issue: Transparency. Frankly, I lead my online life based on the assumption that anything I post is exposed to the worldwide online public (as if anyone really cared). In return, I'm being stalked by a bunch of companies (motives and means of executive aside) that are in the business of sneaking into my house, installing a secret camera, and following my every move. --That's not cool.
