How you are tracked online and what to do about it

[Morreion]

The Web's New Gold Mine: Your Secrets
A Journal investigation finds that one of the fastest-growing businesses on the Internet is the business of spying on consumers. First in a series. (WSJ)

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."

How to Avoid the Prying Eyes
The Internet is rife with surveillance technology, but you can cover some of your tracks (WSJ)

Almost every major website you visit is tracking your online activity. Here's a step-by-step guide to fending off trackers.

Make sure your firewall is on, have an updated antivirus and antispyware program, avoid clicking on things in emails, use a safer browser such as Firefox running the NoScript add-on, even consider running your browser sandboxed (Sandboxie is one such product). Just surfing the Web can be perilous otherwise!

[dotty]

a lil tidbit of info... Google's Chrome browser has an option to open a tab/window in 'incognito mode'. Very handy! Each tab is treated as a separate application which can be very handy also.

[Morreion]

Good point, Dotty!

The series continues:

Sites Feed Personal Details To New Tracking Industry (WSJ)

The largest U.S. websites are installing new and intrusive consumer-tracking technologies on the computers of people visiting their sites—in some cases, more than 100 tracking tools at a time—a Wall Street Journal investigation has found.

The tracking files represent the leading edge of a lightly regulated, emerging industry of data-gatherers who are in effect establishing a new business model for the Internet: one based on intensive surveillance of people to sell data about, and predictions of, their interests and activities, in real time.

The state of the art is growing increasingly intrusive, the Journal found. Some tracking files can record a person's keystrokes online and then transmit the text to a data-gathering company that analyzes it for content, tone and clues to a person's social connections. Other tracking files can re-spawn trackers that a person may have deleted.

[Morreion]

WSJ: Escaping the Scrapers

The major data brokers and people search sites and how to get your information off of them.

[Morreion]

Facebook in Privacy Breach (WSJ)
Top-Ranked Applications Transmit Personal IDs, a Journal Investigation Finds

Facebook games transmitting your info to third parties (Massively)

[Regolyth]

Farmville is the Devil!

[Loendal]

I completely agree with the previous poster, Farmville is ... hold on, let me harvest these turnips real quick.. evil, addictive and generally unappealing to the mass... Hey! Just found some farm bucks, I can buy that dairy farm now! ...market media and high pressure demands of... let me send this gift to my buddy Joey, here... today's progressive society!

[Morreion]

Microsoft Quashed Effort to Boost Online Privacy (WSJ)

Microsoft built its browser so that users must deliberately turn on privacy settings every time they start up the software.

On the Web's Cutting Edge, Anonymity in Name Only (WSJ)

From a single click on a web site, [x+1] correctly identified Carrie Isaac as a young Colorado Springs parent who lives on about $50,000 a year, shops at Wal-Mart and rents kids' videos.

A Web Pioneer Profiles Users by Name (WSJ)

RapLeaf ranks among the most sophisticated players in the fast-growing business of profiling people online and trading in personal details of their lives, an industry that is the focus of a Journal investigation. The San Francisco startup says it has 1 billion e-mail addresses in its database.

Race Is On to 'Fingerprint' Phones, PCs (WSJ)

David Norris wants to collect the digital equivalent of fingerprints from every computer, cellphone and TV set-top box in the world. He's off to a good start. So far, Mr. Norris's start-up company, BlueCava Inc., has identified 200 million devices. By the end of next year, BlueCava says it expects to have cataloged one billion of the world's estimated 10 billion devices.

[Regolyth]

That [x+1] and Fingerprinting is kind of scary.

[Morreion]

Your Apps Are Watching You (WSJ)
A WSJ Investigation finds that iPhone and Android apps are breaching the privacy of smartphone users

An examination of 101 popular smartphone "apps"—games and other software applications for iPhone and Android phones—showed that 56 transmitted the phone's unique device ID to other companies without users' awareness or consent. Forty-seven apps transmitted the phone's location in some way. Five sent age, gender and other personal details to outsiders.