More About Cookies

For the uninitiated there is a file on your hard drive called MagicCookie and it contains private information that uniquely identifies who you are to each company that chooses to write data there. It is widely used by search engines, portals and on-line stores to monitor your personal tastes and search preferences. Such habits are available to any company that chooses to install the special profiling software needed. Profiling software allows a nosy site to replay your entire on-line session, click by click, link by link. If you are a paying customer of a site that uses it, the site marketers can associate your name, address, phone number and demographics with all these preferences and sell this marketing information to whatever junk mailer, spammer or telemarketer they choose, now or in the future if their data usage policies change. Companies are not currently under any legal obligation to inform you what information they collect and what they do with it. If you just love junk mail and telemarketing calls, this is for you! If not, you can erase the old data in the cookie, but a new empty one will come right back and begin to fill up again. MS Explorer and Netscape's browsers both have preference options that allow you to turn off cookies. They also let you selectively allow or disallow whether a cookie will be set on a case by case basis. You can learn more about cookies and profiling at Cookie Central or Junkbusters. Profiling is described at Consumer Profiling Firefly Proposes Clearinghouse For Sharing Information and personify.com

More than half of web users have never heard of cookies, because they are always turned on when you first install a broswer. Of those that know about 25% turn them off in the browser preferences. Typically these are veteran users who have learned the hard way what it is like to be deluged with spam every day. One survey showed that 84% of web users were concerned about companies getting personal information, but most of them have taken no action because they do not know how to proceed other than not buying.

As we mentioned with cookies there is no guarantee about the secondary use of marketing information acquired during the transaction. It can be used later in the same way a mail order house may rent its customer list to others. The web is no different except that now there is an e-mail address too and sending e-mail is essentially free and instantaneous compared to snail mail. Now a marketer can send you a custom offer based on your personal tastes within minutes of when you have purchased a similar item if they choose. If you are buying either information or some kind of entertainment that does not require a shipping address then protections are available through digicash and anonymous e-mail service. Nowadays you can, have a free unique mail box for each merchant if you choose. Privacy advocates are replete with many horror stories of sloppy data matching and malicious misuse of credit information, job history and medical data. The last thing consumers "need" is to have this data available rapidly on a widely distributed network like the web. Web users are so suspicious or aware of these issues that 90% of them have steadfastly refused to buy anything on the web. The safest approach is to find a merchant with a written privacy policy such as members of Truste and good prices and stick with that merchant until you have evidence of misuse. For a perspective about buyer concerns you can read the lengthy discussion paper entitled "Information Privacy in the Marketspace". In cases of outright fraud be sure to contact the National Fraud Information Center

Another avenue is to find a merchant registered with a web business bureau. Privacy is not assured but at least you stand a good chance of not being cheated outright. A few of the more common are BBB Online a web better business bureau, NetCheck a web chamber of commerce, the Web Assurance Bureau another source of help for consumer disputes and The Public Eye a Good Webkeeping Seal of Approval