Our view on Internet privacy: These 'cookies' aren't tasty; you're left hungry for privacy.

What if the next time you visited your local mall, a gaggle of detectives quietly followed you around taking notes on every store you visited, every item you bought, every movie you saw.

OPPOSING VIEW: Don't fear Internet tracking

Let's say they followed you to a bookstore, where you looked at books on treating cancer and depression. Then they started whispering that you might have cancer or psychological problems. At that point, you'd surely tell them to hand over their notebooks and get lost.

Well, companies of many types are routinely doing just that — keeping tabs on your interests, purchases, likes and dislikes and making major assumptions about you — every time you surf the Internet.

For the most part such tracking is benign, even helpful. But as Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., noted at a recent hearing on the subject, it's also a little bit "creepy." She had, as an experiment, searched online for "foreign SUV" and when she visited an unrelated website 10 minutes later, she was served ads for foreign SUVs.

The surveillance is intrusive, pervasive and largely unregulated. Most consumers haven't a clue how much information about them is being gathered and stored for sale, nor do they have a reliable way to stop it.
Even computer experts we interviewed were flabbergasted by recent Wall Street Journal reports that the 50 most popular Internet sites installed a total of 3,180 tracking files (commonly known as "cookies") on a test computer the newspaper set up. Dictionary.com, of all places, had the most tools; Wikipedia.org was the only site among the 50 to install none.

Other tracking tools can also record the key strokes a visitor types, telling trackers not only where they've been but also what they've said while there. Even those savvy enough to block or erase cookies can be tracked by "flash cookies," which breathe new life into old cookies even after users think they've deleted them.

For now, there are a few saving graces. For one, cookies allow people returning to a site to enter without remembering their user name and password. Further, much of the surveillance is done so companies can target ads at consumers they think will want them, as happened with McCaskill.

Also, tracking companies so far aren't generally connecting your surfing habits to your name or e-mail address — at least not yet. But they could.
Collecting data violates no laws, and tracking companies are largely unregulated. There is no agreement on what should be out of bounds, such as employment, financial or medical data. And the data can be held indefinitely. Perhaps for the day when providing it to prospective employers or insurance companies becomes big business.

Federal privacy laws are not designed to protect consumers in this new age. Medical information is protected when it's shared, say, by your doctor. Once you share it online, perhaps visiting a discussion group, trackers are free from those laws.

Many companies have joined trade groups and agreed to reasonable guidelines and good practices. But there are always outlaws, and even the guidelines have holes. Practices that are mostly useful now could morph into something far more invasive with only the smallest adjustments.

Better to erect some legal guardrails before the road toward decreasing privacy becomes too slippery. Congress is already at work on this, but the outcome is anyone's guess. Meanwhile, consumer dossiers are getting bigger and more valuable to sell.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/ed ... 9_ST_N.htm


Opposing view on Internet privacy: Don't fear Internet tracking

By Randall Rothenberg

A wild debate is on about websites using "tracking tools" to "spy" on American Internet users. Don't fall for it. The controversy is led by activists who want to obstruct essential Internet technologies and return the U.S. to a world of limited consumer choice in news, entertainment, products and services.

OUR VIEW: These 'cookies' aren't tasty; you're left hungry for privacy.

They have rebranded as "surveillance technology" various devices — cookies, beacons and IP addresses — that fuel the Internet. Without them, Web programming and advertising can't make its way to your laptop, phone or PC. At risk are $300 billion in U.S. economic activity and 3.1 million jobs generated by the advertising-supported Internet, according to Harvard professors John Deighton and John Quelch.

Thousands of small retailers and sites devoted to niche hobbies, ethnic minorities, sports teams, politics, "mommy blogs" and myriad other interests — as well as local businesses, such as your neighborhood car dealer and grocer — depend on these tools. Regulating them unwisely puts at risk people such as Tim Carter, a former Cincinnati home contractor who now makes a living with his ad-supported site AsktheBuilder.com, and James and Susan Martin, who work full time and care for their kids from their Montross, Va., home, thanks to their site, Ikeafans.com.

The information they use to deliver content is impersonal. Unlike newspaper and cable-TV subscription data, it doesn't contain your name or address. Yet activists and the uninformed are seeking a standard that would force websites to collect real personal information from you, if you want to receive content relevant to your life.

Here's an even greater irony: You already have what you need to control your privacy, by eliminating cookies from your browser. Major websites offer highly visible tools that put consumers in charge of their data.
Moreover, the nation's largest media and marketing trade associations have issued comprehensive principles for self-regulation with strong consumer privacy protections backed by the Better Business Bureau. The Federal Trade Commission has praised this initiative.

Federal regulation of the Internet is one more Big Government idea that's inimical to consumer choice, the First Amendment, communications diversity and economic growth.

Randall Rothenberg is the president and CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, which represents more than 460 leading media and technology companies.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/ed ... _ST1_N.htm