Every day, creepy internet programs are tracking and collating what you are doing on your computer. Rodney E. Lever is not a fan of this sort of intrusion.
ALL DAY, every day, there are creepy things out there that are tracking just about everything you do on your computer.
They have funny names like:
- 33Across
- [x+1]
- AddtoAny
- Aggregate Knowledge
- OrangeSoda
- Reinvigorate.....
One Sunday morning recently, I discovered 42 such trackers beavering away inside my hard drive, following my every move. Every time I hit the keyboard, they were taking notes.
This is not a bad dream; not the result of a binge the night before — this is real. This is a George Orwell fantasy writ large inside my iMac. George Orwell named his most famous and scariest book 1984. He wrote it in 1948. Surely it is no coincidence that I bought my first personal computer in 1984.
We are all being spied around the clock by a swag of mysterious agencies. What for? I have no idea. But I know its happening. Online tracking in our computers makes the phone hacking scandal in the UK last year hardly worth bothering about.
The United States Federal Trade Commission has taken note and has published a report. They want a voluntary code to be introduced by the computer industry so that home users can know more about their activities and the reasons for them. They are asking nicely. Fat chance!
These creepy crawlies aren’t collecting our personal private data just for fun. I guess that the very basic reason is so they can increase their sales — and to do so they stick their wet little noses into things that are none of their damn business. What else are they up to? Who are they?
The most active snoops happen to be two massive corporations who dominate much of the online activity around the world — Facebook and Google. They, at least, tell you openly who they are and what they are about. Others tell you nothing.
Another activator is Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, with its operating centre in Israel supposedly using its resources only to track and zap people who steal the secret codes of their international pay TV systems.
Central to the tracking industry are the cutely named “cookies.”
As most computer users know, they install surreptitiously every time we visit an internet site. They are seen as a vital security tag, and to help identify and confirm returning visitors. Most users are not particularly bothered by them and accept their use in the cause of efficiency. But some cookies actually follow you around on the internet via your browser and report back to their masters on everything you do.
The US FTC has no power yet to force legal restraints on professional hacking – to protect the private of internet users, but it is able to make suggestions.
So what about the bugging systems listed at the top of this story? I decided to bug the buggers.
33Across
This company says 600,000 publishers and 375 Fortune 1000 marketers use the site’s technology and tools and "real time predictive systems" to connect their content and products into the "social graph." The company claims more than a billion users and has offices in 11 major US cities. The company’s spiel goes on to say that the toughest crossword puzzles can be solved if you decipher a large horizontal word in the middle of the puzzle. In many difficult puzzles these are often 32 or 33 across.
'Thus, 33Across unlocks to the puzzle of social connections.'
[X + 1]
Promises customers that it will
'...accelerate acquisition with data driven marketing.'
AddtoAny
Offering add ons and sharing and easier connection with social networking programs like Facebook and Twitter.
Aggregate Knowledge
Claims it is the only media intelligence company that offers advertisers and agencies
'...an exact science to pinpoint where to reach highest performing customers in a single platform, enabling marketers to most effectively allocate media dollars.'
Orange Soda
'See how we do the voodoo that we do so well.'
This company claims to make online checkouts easier.
Reinvigorate
Live visitor tracking.
'Who is on your site.? What are they doing? Find out in real time. Not the next day.'
The sites above have been chosen randomly. I suspect there are hundreds more. What are they offering? A new way to shift money around to stimulate the economy? Is this what the internet is about?
Four of the six sites above had WOT (Web of Trust) warnings added to their web page. Users may know that WOT offers a service to people who wish to comment on the values and trustworthiness of sites.
Software designers are emerging now with new ways for users to maintain some element of privacy. Tracker-blocking software is available on the internet for download. Some are free. Some ask for payment for extra features.
I have lately installed three types and I block everything now for sheer spite! But every day new trackers seem to show up and each one has to be added to my lists on unwanted visitors. I even lock my firewall to try to keep them out, but they keep sneaking in. I don’t have anything to hide, really. But be damned if I want strangers poking their noses into my life and my business!
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
