online.wsj.com
Tucked in a corner of the computer-Beaty Ashley Hayes is a small file that helps to collect personal details about her, which will be offered for sale by a tenth of a penny.
The file includes a single-code-4c812db292272995e5416a323e79bd37 who secretly identified as a 26 year old woman from Nashville, Tennessee
The code knows his favorite movies are as if for the first time, The Princess Bride and Ten Things I Hate you. You know you like the TV series Sex and the City and reading entertainment news and their tendency to answer questionnaires.
"I like to think I have something of a mystery, but apparently not!" Said Hayes-Beaty when he learned what it revealed about her that row of numbers. "The profile is eerily right." Hayes-Beaty
is being monitored by Lotame Solutions Inc., a New York company that uses sophisticated software called "beacon" to capture what people write on a website, and the comments they make about a movie, or interest in content on pregnancy and parenting. Lotame packs all that data on individual profiles, without specifying the names of the people, who sells to companies looking for customers. The likes of Hayes-Beaty can be sold wholesale (each group of thousand people who love movies are sold for $ 1) or specific groups (people over 26 living in the south of the country and that they like it was the first time).
"We can segment to reach a person," says Eric Porres, the marketing director Lotame. An investigation by The Wall Street Journal found that one of the fastest growing business is to spy on Internet users on the web.
Who spy?
The WSJ carried out an extensive study to evaluate and analyze the wide range of cookies and other monitoring technologies that companies are using to track Internet users. Monitoring reveals that consumers have become more pervasive and profound than many, with the exception of a handful of people at the forefront of the industry realize.
The study found that the 50 sites visited by Americans (of which there are several global sites that are accessed millions of Latin Americans) an average of 64 pieces installed tracking technology in the computers of visitors, usually without any notice. A dozen more than a hundred sites installed. The nonprofit organization Wikipedia does not install.
tracking technology is becoming more intelligent and increasingly intrudes on the privacy of users. Monitor these files previously limited primarily to delete cookies that record the sites that people visit. But the WSJ found new tools that scan in real time what people are doing on a website, then immediately determine the location, income, interests, shopping and even medical problems of users. Some of these tools are multiplied secretly even after users try to delete them.
These profiles of individuals, that are constantly updated, are bought and sold in markets like stock exchanges, which have appeared over the past 18 months.
New technologies are transforming the Internet economy. Previously, advertisers buy ads on specific websites, such as a car ad on a page about vehicles. But now, advertisers are paying extra to keep people on the Internet, no matter where they go, with highly targeted messages.
Internet between the user and the advertiser, WSJ identified more than 100 brokers, tracking companies, data brokers and advertising networks that compete to meet the growing demand for data on individual behaviors and interests.
For example, data on the habits of Hayes-Beaty film being offered to advertisers in BlueKai Inc., one of the new bags.
"It's a sea change in how the industry works," says Omar Tawakol, president BlueKai executive. "Advertisers want to buy access to people, not web pages." How
trackers installed?
The Wall Street Journal examined the 50 most popular sites in the U.S., representing about 40% of the websites they visit the U.S.. (Also tested on WSJ.com and WSJAmericas.com) and then analyzed the trace files and programs that these sites downloaded to a computer test.
As a group, the 50 sites placed 3,180 trace files in the WSJ test computer. About a third of these were harmless, placed to remember the password for a favorite site or to count the items most popular.
However, more than two-thirds, 2,224, were installed by 131 companies, many of which are in business to track Internet users to create databases of consumer profiles, which can be sold.
The main site that we used this technology, the investigation was Dictionary.com, owned by IAC / InterActive Corp. A visit to this online dictionary resulted in 234 files or programs downloaded to the computer test, 223 of which were from companies that track Internet users.
The information gathered is anonymous companies in the sense that Internet users are identified by a number assigned to your computer, not a specific name. Lotame, for example, claims that do not know the user name and Hayes-Beaty-only behavior and attributes, identified by a code. People who do not want to be tracked can go Lotame system.
industry also ensures that data is used without causing damage. David Moore, Chairman of 24 / 7 RealMedia Inc., an advertising network to WPP PLC, said that such tracking gives Internet users a better advertising. "When an ad is directed at a specific person ceases to be an advertisement and it becomes important information," said.
tracking people on the web is nothing new. But the technology is growing and gaining so much power and pervasive that even some of the analyzed sites say they were not aware, until they WSJ reported that they were installing files to spy on their visitors. WSJ
found MSN.com, the popular portal, Microsoft Corp., planted a trace file full of data: I had a prediction of the age of the sailing, zip code, gender, and even a code containing calculations income, marital status, presence of children at home and if you owned your home or not, according to the tracking company that created the file, Targus Information Corp.
both Targus and Microsoft say they did not know how the file came to MSN.com and added that this did not contain information "that identifies people."
Tracking is performed by tiny files and programs known as cookies, flash cookies and beacons. These are planted on a computer when a user visits a website. U.S. courts have ruled that it is legal to place the simplest type of file, cookies, in the same way that someone using a phone can let a friend listen to the conversation. Justice should not have ruled on more complex crawlers.
The effect on users
more intrusive tracking comes from what is known in business as trace files "of others." They work as follows: the first time a user visits a site, it installs a trace file, which assigns the computer a unique identification number. Then, when the user visits another site associated with the same tracking company, might take note of where you were that user and where it is now. Thus, over time, the company can build a more complete profile.
One such ecosystem is the ad network that Yahoo Inc. to place ads get payments target specific users on their websites. The network of Yahoo knows many things about Cate Reid, who just graduated from high school. Knows what a woman between 13 and 18 who is interested in weight loss issues. Reid was able to confirm that when a reporter showed her a little known feature in the Yahoo site, the Interest Ad Manager, which displays some of the information that Yahoo has collected on it.
Yahoo
information on Reid, who at that time was 17, was on target: the young woman was concerned that possibly were heavy and has often done research about diets.
Each time you enter the Internet, he says, is weight loss ads. "I'm self conscious about my weight," says Reid, whose father asked not to reveal the city where he resides. "I try not to think about it ... but the ads make me think about it."
Yahoo spokeswoman, Amber Allman, says the company runs no ads consciously weight loss less than 18 years, although it does with adults.
"It is likely that this client has received a notice not specifically targeted," says Allman. Reid may also have seen advertisements directed toward her by other tracking companies.
tracking consumers is the foundation of economic online advertising revenues of U.S. $ 23,000 million in advertising spending last year. Tracking activity has soared. Researchers in the laboratories of AT & T Labs and the Worcester Polytechnic Institute last year found tracking technology in 80% of 1,000 popular sites, versus 40% in these sites in 2005. WSJ
found trace files that gather financial and health data. In the online dictionary Merriam-Webster.com, owned by Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc., a trace file Healthline Networks Inc., an ad network, scan the page the user is viewing and shows ads related to what you see there . So for example, a person who is looking for words with depression might see ads Healthline on treatments for depression on this page and subsequent pages.
Healthline says it does not allow advertisers to follow online to users who have been sensitive issues like AIDS, sexually transmitted diseases, eating disorders and impotence. The company allows advertisers to keep people with bipolar disorder and anxiety, overactive bladder, according to their marketing materials.
targeted ads can become too personal. Last year, Julia Preston, an education software designer 32 years of Austin, Texas, sought information online on uterine disorders. Soon he began to notice fertility ads on sites visited. Now he knows that he has no problem, but still receive the same ads.
"It's frustrating," he says. Fan
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB128070567886623045.html?mod=WSJS_inicio_MiddleFirst
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