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"Our Digital Footprint and Privacy issues" 

Introduction

The article entitled “You are What you Click” is describing how the privacy of the Internet users have been violated to an extend that every time a person log in to any website, Google and other major Internet users can know who the user is, even if the user did not provide any of his or her personal details. That is why the issue of privacy violation is very common. This is evidenced by major internet providers such as Google are facing a number of lawsuits related to privacy violation. According to Frederick & Lal, (2009, p.25), David Auerbach asserts that Google has been paying huge amount of fines for privacy violations such as tracking users of Apple’s Safari browser and impeding an FCC. However, as David Auerbach argues, most of these violations are not taken seriously. They just bubble through the news and stir public outrage, which is often followed by a backlash and occasionally a fine. The essay will support the thesis which states that “You are what you click” by describing how privacy violation can expose the Internet user’s details without their knowledge.

Body

The first factor facilitating privacy violations in the internet, as expressed in the article is that privacy violation is the source of huge money for internet providers such as Google. The article reveals astonishing findings related to how Google has managed to survive and remain at the top. According to the article, companies such as Google and Facebook use the private information of internet users to get money. According to Bailey, (2011, p.56), Google can observe people and hence enable all the advertising companies to use it. That is why the article indicated that Internet marketing companies that aren’t Google can’t observe people at the moment of search but knowing more about their lives might help refine targeted advertising. This is evidenced by the fact that the Google’s gross revenue was $37.9 billion in 2011 compared to Facebook, which was just $3.7 billion.

The second reason facilitating the privacy violation is that most of the companies such as Google and Yahoo just acts like information pipeline. The article argues that the reason why some of privacy violations cannot be discovered easily is that most of the big companies carry out more mysterious activities than smaller companies such as Acxiom, BlueKai and Next Jump. Big companies act as pipeline of data and do not need to engage in transactions with data exchanges. They handle data internally. Because they handle a sufficient amount of consumer data, they can easily replicate the working model through different stages such as observation, collection, aggregation and targeting. Because of this, it is hard to pinpoint the company responsible for privacy violations.

Another factor identified in the article is that most of the promises made concerning privacy are false. According to Bailey, (2011, p.237), this is evidenced by the fact that there are many cases where data otherwise regarded as anonymous can be identified with particular users. The article gives several examples concerning how anonymous data can be matched with users. For example, Netflix user history otherwise released anonymously such as consumer purchases, website visits, health information can be identified easily including the personal information. AOL large data sets, for example, were immediately identified by the New York Times and others. Consequently, it is apparent that privacy policies today give a false sense of security.

From the foregoing chapters, it is apparent that privacy and protection of the private data in the Internet is not an easy task. In fact, the regulations and advocacy have been consistently losing ground against the advertising phenomenon. According to Wu & American Bar Association, (2007, p.17), laws such as HIPAA do not guarantee anonymity. That is why cases such as imposing fine on Google are irrelevant in the current Internet age. This is because there is no legal or regulatory infrastructure set up to monitor the collection, aggregation and trading of consumer information. This means that however much we are still using the internet, what we do is what it comes out to others. That is why it is true to say you are what you click.

The raw data is quite sensitive and therefore many companies have policies and regulation against retaining the information o their websites. An IP address is anonymyzed by Google after a period of nine months and cookies after one and half year. According to Bailey, (2011, p.97), most companies have no such policies and therefore will allow the users to visit their sites without any restriction. Many companies have profiles of users, which are always incomplete and inaccurate for instance Acxiom may the slot the users without their names into a specific demographic.

A company targeting needs far more coupons for targeting, demographic for instance, which products to buy and the brands available in the market and how to get them. The world of micro targeting is significant in locating voters during the election time and getting .them to vote. This has been successful to politicians like Barrack Obama in 2012 influencing a significant outcome in his campaign and the result of the election. Identifying political affiliation is still low tech compared to advertising targeting which is far more important.

Consumer data undergoes major processes such as collection, assimilated resold, processed and exploited by large companies. According to Palfrey & Gasser, (2008, p.345), most of these companies are well known an experience in dealing with the information. The activities of the big companies like Facebook , Yahoo and Google is not well known as they don’t have to engage in transactions with data exchanges. Their transactions are end to end-to-end involving aggregation, usage and targeting. Therefore, their data sets are privatized and stored internally.

With the ever-increasing use of the internet, the amount of data a company is being more significant as the type of data it has. According to Hameurlain, A. (2011, p.123), having a good chunk of data defines the profits a company makes. Google Flu Trend for instance, tracks the location of flu virus. This is done by locating where the search is being done and when on Google sites and has enabled Google Company to be ahead in research and development. In first world economies the statistics of Google Flu Trends correlates closely with the government data .Consumer data is also significant in predicting when a customer will buy a product and which brand. Targeting the consumers has been the main aim of advertising and with the arrival of Google ads the click rates plummeted as people stopped clicking on the brighter banners. Google did not store the users profile details, but the odds could accessed only by Google search engines.

Most consumers would prefer that their information be not collected but most companies would consider their choices to privacy. According to Hameurlain, (2011, p.156), the companies have established social sites in which they can easily entice the users and therefore the right to privacy looses ground slowly by slowly. According to Bailey, (2011, p.234),browsers and software provide minimal protection against the collection of these data for instance Disconnect and Ghostery prevent a great deal of tracking via cookies in personal computers but only used by a small group of consumers. There is no legal policies and set infrastructure in the protection of collection, aggregation and trading of consumer information in the internet. Most companies do not have their data collection scrutinized so closely.

Any data in a site is significant in business and any transactions. Large companies like Google, Yahoo and Facebook know the significance of trading with the information they have in their sites. They will try as much as possible to sell as much data as they can to increase their net profits and brand in the market. However, more and more sites are coming up and therefore should consider improving their softwares and security systems for their users.

Conclusion

It is apparent that the foregoing discussion has indeed proved the thesis statement “You are What you Click.” It has provided several ways in which Internet providers can access and store individual’s personal data even without their consent. It is also clear that major internet providers are violating privacy because it is through this violation that they could earn income.

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