Week 5-EOC WSJ Privacy

It's "unnerving," –she says.-WSJ Privacy. This was quoted from Julia Preston, a 32-year-old education software designer from Austin, Texas. She was talking about how she feels about being tracked on the internet. She had once done a search on her computer about uterine disorders and soon after she started to notice fertility ads pop up on all of the websites she visited. This bothered her because she felt that her privacy was being violated. This violation of privacy has become a very big deal in society lately. Is there even such thing as online privacy now-a-days?

“A Journal investigation finds that one of the fastest-growing businesses on the Internet is the business of spying on consumers”. –WSJ Privacy. Apparently more spying is going on than consumers know about. How are we as consumers supposed to feel about our every move being followed on the internet? Not only are these spying companies getting ahold of our personal information they are turning around and selling this information to companies that need the information about consumers. This spying is becoming more popular by the day.

“Tracking became possible in 1994 when the tiny text files called cookies were introduced in an early browser, Netscape Navigator. Their purpose was user convenience: remembering contents of Web shopping carts.Back then, online advertising barely existed. The first banner ad appeared the same year. When online ads got rolling during the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, advertisers were buying ads based on proximity to content—shoe ads on fashion sites. The dot-com bust triggered a power shift in online advertising, away from websites and toward advertisers. Advertisers began paying for ads only if someone clicked on them. Sites and ad networks began using cookies aggressively in hopes of showing ads to people most likely to click on them, thus getting paid.” -WSJ Privacy. These activities led to companies wanting to follow and target their target consumers to help better their bottom line by boosting sells. In my eyes I feel that there is definitely no online privacy now-a-days. Unlike most people that are bothered by the lack of privacy, I personally think it is ok that there is companies out there that track my information. I think it is kind of nice to be able to only see ads that I usually find interesting. It makes it easier to find what I’m looking for sometimes.