Protect shoppers' privacy online
Hurricane Irene: Make sure you hit the online sales before your power goes out. Credit: Handout
Businesses that track what you do on the Internet aren't inherently evil. By learning from your activities, advertisers can offer products of interest and avoid bothering you with things that aren't. This advertising, after all, is what makes it possible for each of us to gorge ourselves from the Web's bottomless horn of plenty and stick someone else with the check.
But matters long ago got out of hand. Right now, Web users can't tell who knows what about them, or who might be aggregating this information and for what purposes. Most people have no idea how extensively their online activity is being monitored, often by bits of code surreptitiously installed on their very own computers. Even sophisticated users find it challenging to keep the record of their Web activities private.
That's why a Federal Trade Commission proposal to give Internet users a simple "do not track" mechanism is so welcome. It's a promising step toward giving people some protection from an online data-gathering free-for-all. But it's only a first step. One hurdle is political; congressional action might be needed, although the popularity of the government's "do not call'' list, which has mostly suppressed the intrusions of telemarketers, could mean bipartisan support.
Another hurdle is technological. "Do not call'' was easy; you sign up, and people selling stuff by phone for the most part aren't allowed to bug you. But it would be difficult for a "do not track'' mechanism to be equally simple and effective online, where resourceful data firms would be highly motivated to find ways of circumventing it.
There is a considerable basis for government action, which is that the overall burden for maintaining any kind of privacy currently rests so heavily on American consumers, the sector of society least able to manage it. Requiring each of us to master the intricacies of Internet security - to say nothing of the other ways privacy is under pressure from commerce - is unrealistic and unfair.
Websurfers deserve the tools to decide for themselves how much of their online activities they want known to others. That's true even though a user's name usually isn't attached to the uniquely identifiable profile that data firms assemble from your computer's wanderings on the Internet. That profile is too thorough for some people's comfort. Sometimes it's possible to figure out a user's real name. And someday attaching a real name may be all too easy.
Business might avoid unwelcome regulation by adopting a sensible and easy-to-use do-not-track system without waiting for one to be imposed. Researchers at Stanford University have proposed just such a thing at donottrack.us.
Internet users, meanwhile, must recognize that advertising underwrites much of what they get from the Web. If you want the riches the Internet has to offer without spending any money for them, you can expect to pay in the coin of privacy. Information may want to be free, but information providers expect to be paid. hN
