Internet Tracking

Electronic passage through the Internet leaves a trail that can be traced. Tracing is a process that follows the Internet activity backwards, from the recipient to the user. As well, a user's Internet activity on web sites can also be tracked on the recipient site i.e., what sites are visited and how often. Sometimes this tracking and tracing ability is used to generate email to the user promoting a product that is related to the sites visited. User information, however, can also be gathered covertly. This leaves us wondering if tracking devices violates the user's privacy.

There are different types of tracking devices; most common one is called cookies. Cookies are computer files that are stored on a user's computer during a visit to a web site. When the user electronically enters the web site, the host computer automatically loads the file(s) to the user's computer.

The cookie is a tracking device, which records the electronic movements made by the user at the site, as well as identifiers such as a username and password. Commercial web sites make use of cookies to allow a user to establish an account on the first visit to the site and so to avoid having to enter account information i.e., address, credit card number, financial activity on subsequent visits. User information can also be collected unbeknown to the user and subsequently used for whatever purpose the host intends.

Cookies are files, and so can be transferred from the host computer to another computer. This can occur legally i.e., selling of a subscriber mailing list or illegally i.e., "hacking in" to a host computer and copying the file. Also, cookies can be acquired as part of a law enforcement investigation.

A program called Adware could potentially be another source of tracking device. Adware is software integrated into or bundled with a program. It is any software package which automatically plays, displays, or downloads advertising material to a computer after the software is installed on it or while the application is being used.

There are concerns about adware because it often takes the form of spyware,another internet tracking device. Spyware is like a cookie, in which information about the user's activity is tracked, reported, and often re-sold, often without the knowledge or consent of the user. Of even greater concern is malware, which may interfere with the function of other software applications, in order to force users to visit a particular web site.

It is not uncommon for people to confuse "adware" with "spyware" and "malware", especially since these concepts overlap. For example, if one user installs "adware" on a computer, and consents to a tracking feature, the "adware" becomes "spyware" when another user visits that computer, and interacts with and is tracked by the "adware" without their consent.

Spyware has prompted an outcry from computer security and privacy advocates, including the Electronic Privacy Information Center. Often, spyware applications send the user's browsing habits to an ad-serving company, which then targets adverts at the user based on their interests.

Another type of internet tracking device is called a web bug. A web bug is a widely used, yet virtually undetectable, means of tracking people's Internet surfing habits is joining its better-known cousin, the cookie, as the subject of several lawsuits and a privacy initiative by the government.

"The technology, often called web bugs or 1-pixel gifs, is prompting further concern that the once-freewheeling web is becoming more like an Orwellian Big Browser. Like cookies, web bugs are electronic tags that help web sites and advertisers track visitors' whereabouts in cyberspace. But web bugs are invisible on the page and are much smaller, about the size of the period at the end of this sentence." (Web bugs)

"A Web bug "is like a beacon, so that every time you hit a Web page it sends a ping or call-back to the server saying 'Hi, this is who I am and this is where I am,'" said Craig Nathan, chief technology officer for privacy start-up Meconomy.com and former technical liaison for Personify. " ( Web bugs)

Most computers have cookies, which are placed on a person's hard drive when a banner ad is displayed or a person signs up for an online service. Savvy Web surfers know they are being tracked when they see a banner ad. But people can't see web bugs, and anti-cookie filters won't catch them. So the web bugs wind up tracking surfers in areas online where banner ads are not present or on sites where people may not expect to be trailed.

That was the case last month when the White House ordered its drug policy office to stop using web bugs on the government's anti-drug site Freevibe.com. Following the mandate, the Clinton administration issued strict new rules regulating federal use of the technology which can surreptitiously collect personal information.

Web bugs can "talk" to existing cookies on a computer if they are both from the same web site or advertising company, such as DoubleClick, which uses bugs and dominates the online advertising market.That means for example, that if a person visited Johnson & Johnson's YourBaby Web site, which uses DoubleClick Web bugs, the bug would read the visitor's DoubleClick cookie ID number, which shows the past online behavior for that computer. The information would then go back to DoubleClick.

Ad networks and agencies say cookies and other tracking devices are used to help both consumers and Web sites. Under fire from privacy advocates, ad executives have consistently said the information collected is kept private and is the sole property of the company that is being advertised.

But privacy advocates see an insidious