NebuAd, Inc is pioneering a new way to study what you do on the Internet so that ads can be targeted to your interests. The question of whether the way they do it is invading your privacy is valid. In the past, most services use the practice of story “cookies” on your computer to leave a trail of what you have visited. Since most people really do not understand what cookies are, suffice it to say that they are little piles of information, stored on your computer, that a Web service can collect in order to target ads, or information to you. This is done millions of times a day without users having any idea. NebuAd thinks they have an improved process. They have developed a hardware device that can be installed at an Internet Service Provider to monitor traffic and then report to the advertising clients what movements you have made. The advantage here is that they can monitor at a much more detailed level what you have done on any particular site. this improves the level and amount of data on your traffic patterns, so theoretically, advertisers can target you even better. The question becomes, at what level have we completely invaded privacy. At this point, it seems that people are pretty willing to, or very ignorant to these practices because there has not been much of a public outcry. However, outcries do come from the technology world at times…

Facebook recently announced a new service called Beacon. The purpose as stated is that this is a way to publish more information about yourself to your friends. This includes anything you buy through Facebook. The problem is, the information on your purchase is also shared with advertisers so the system has multiple tentacles. In the first generation, it was built as an opt-out system. In other words, when you did transactions, all the information went to you friends and to the advertisers, unless you specifically went into your profile and turned parts of Beacon off. This caused a huge cry from the younger generation of tech savvy constituents that saw this for what it was. A great money making system for Facebook, and a not as useful service to members. Facebook has since turned the system into an opt-in model. One additional point of annoyance with Beacon, that is the ability for advertisers to market to all your friends based on the things you like – on the assumption, they might like them too. It will be interesting to see where the general public will come down on the overall privacy issue.