Who Is Tracking You?

Courtesy of TheGuardian.com


Who Is Tracking You by internetprivacy

Who Is Tracking You?

The concept behind the site Who Is Tracking You is very simple and straightforward. It will be a site dedicated to telling the behind tales of different tracking services as they go about their normal routines of tracking and storing anything and everything that they can find about everyone who enters the hallowed halls of the world wide web today.

You probably don’t recognize the names of most tracking companies... ...and that’s just the way they want it.

Tracking companies are part of a huge network of advertisers and websites that use cookies, web bugs, and other tracking technologies to collect your personal information as you browse the web. These companies create profiles of you that often includes the sites you visit, your searches, articles you read, things you buy, videos you watch, and much more.

Data miners combine that online data with offline data like salary history, voter files, salary history, and marriage licenses. Companies use these profiles for things ranging from merely annoying, like targeted online ads, to more concerning, like determining your credit or whether you get a job.

How do these companies make money?

Tracking companies generally make money by either selling your information to other companies or displaying ads to you.

How are targeted ads different from regular ads?

Regular, non-targeted ads are based on the content of the webpage. For example, if you visit a website about Gibson guitars, the ads you’ll see will probably have to do with guitars; get guitar lessons, buy guitar strings, etc. This makes sense, right?

But in contrast, targeted ads are based on you. For example, if you’ve been researching trips to Germany and checked out several websites about it, trackers know you’re interested in the topic of Germany, and will show you Germany-related ads on every site that supports targeted advertising. Targeted ads have nothing to do with the content of the page and everything to do with you as an individual.

Dirty Dingus Mcgee - Premiere Internet Privacy Advocate for 2013

Dirty Dingus Mcgee, the quintessential example of one who has been down the rough rocky road of the Internet for a very long time and seen them all come and go. For most that promote something on the Internet it is pure luck tht someone, somewhere finds their information, and actually makes the move to purchase goods/services or whatever. For Mcgee, his job was search engine optimization for major Internet based companies. There is no luck that Mcgee is where he is on Yahoo, and the other major search engines, as it is a precisely orchestrated campaign that has put his information exactly where he wants it to go.

Mcgee made the conscious decision some time ago to get out of the rat race of SEO, and return to something much more timely and substantial. That being Internet privacy in 2013.

Mcgee is very unique in the world of the Internet. There is no lying, no hype, no claims and nothing but the truth told on his amazing Internet Privacy Web Ring of information that address all aspects of Internet privacy, the lack of it, and sound, proven ways to assure the individual of gaining it. He tells it like it is, and if someone does not like it, who cares? Many, and as a matter of fact most on the Internet today try to lie and mask their way here. It is a rich and fertile field for liars, con men/women, scams, schemes and other forms of illegal behavior.