KISS Your Privacy Away
A startling article in Wired today exposed the existence some of the technology base of a company called KISSmetrics. What is startling about KISSmetrics is not that they have an excellent web statistics tool, but that they have been found to be “using sneaky techniques to prevent users from opting out of being tracked” according to the article.
What does this mean for online privacy and identity theft? Several things…
The biggest concern for consumers is once again not knowing who they can trust. The web becomes a huge black hole full of potential threats to personal privacy and identity theft. While KISSmetrics’ founder claims the data is not used for malicious purposes, that only speaks for the parent company itself. The technology employed does allow for different sites who are using the KISSmetrics system to share data if they choose to. For example, I could call a friendly competitor and exchange customer demographics. Depending on the site in question, this data could be linked to users ids, email addresses and assorted other bits of personal information.
One of the most disturbing revelations is the emergence of the once-theoretical and controversial technology called ‘E-tags.’ In layman’s terms, E-tags provide the same functionality to web analytics systems as cookies but are not subject to deletion. They are maintained in the browser’s cache. This means simply that most users are unaware of them and can be tracked for long periods of time without knowing it.
To read more on the topic, click THIS link.
