Gary Kovacs: Tracking our online trackers
We are being tracked, as we surf websites, in ways that are not always conform to what we would agree if we knew it. From time to time, tracking can be helpful in a way that it enables websites to recommend us shoes or clothes, friends we should connect to or places we would like to see, but companies are abusing this tracking by building a sort of digital profile, so called ‘Behavioural Tracking’, and using it in ways we are not aware of. This kind of tracking is what caused a problem of using data without the permission of the users. The bad of online tracking is that it filters everything you do online, there is lack of control and data can be stolen (thesis).

The first reason online tracking is bad is that the data, that companies receives from a user’s online behavioural, has the potential to get stuck in a sort of filter bubble. Hereby other information becomes unreachable to that same user and similar information are shown repeatedly, putting the user in a sort of filter bubble. Also for advertisers, this reason is a disadvantage, as they are missing users who would be interesting in their product or service.

Second, many website do whatever they want with user’s information. Sites such as Amazon, Facebook and Google, collects these kind of data and often allow third-party advertising sites to do almost whatever they want with it. This is lack of control and the users are unable to refrain out of it, as they are being followed every single second or click online.

Third, data can end up in the wrong hands. The danger exist that an advertising firm can be hacked and that sensitive, confidential information can be stolen. Last few years hacking incidents in general has increased and this topic became more a concern. For example, the largest breaches ever happened, was at The PlayStation Network (Sony), which was hacked and confidential information, such as names, birth dates, passwords, security questions and credit card numbers of more than 75 million users worldwide were stolen. Sony provided free identity theft protection service on their expenses to prevent identity theft of those users.

Online tracking is bad first of all, because user can get stuck in a sort of bubble, making other potential information unreachable. Secondly is that companies, that sells these kind of digital profiles to third-parties, cannot control what Third-parties do with these data. And last, confidential information can be stolen and thieves can abuse this. There is not much what we can do except to be aware of this issues, but a good idea is to use Collusion (software of Mozilla, for Firefox browsers) to know who is tracking your details and movements.