Stop snooping on me

Deep inside my computer, in a place Microsoft apparently doesn’t want me to find very easily, is an ever-growing file called index.dat that’s been relentlessly storing my Internet Explorer browsing history from the time I started using this computer. It can tell me what site I was browsing five minutes ago, just as surely as it can tell me where I was a year ago at this time. I don't want it to track my online habits, but I don't matter. It doesn’t care. Even if I clear my browsing history or delete Temp files, index.dat is still going to store that stuff anyway. And if I used Outlook or Outlook Express for e-mail, it would be logging all the messages I’ve sent or received, too.

Sure, there are ways to clean it out -- but none of them are easy for average home users. That's by design.

I never asked index.dat to do this stuff. Neither, as far as I can recall, did it ask my permission to secretly record my every move on the Internet and store it for God knows what purpose. It shouldn’t matter that I'm not trying to hide something. That’s beside the point.

But index.dat does, in a roundabout way, bring me to my point: Online marketers do pretty much the same thing all the time, using behavioral profiling to ostensibly serve up ads targeted to my likes and dislikes. Basically, these companies track my every move on the Internet and use that data to build a behavioral profile they then use to send me targeted marketing messages.

The companies that gather that information never asked my permission to track my online wanderings, record that data and share it with others. In fact, as best I can tell, they don’t even bother telling me they're doing it. Maybe they do, mabe it’s buried somewhere in their privacy statements, in a place not easy to find -- just like index.dat

The folks doing this tracking -- let's call them "The Trackers" must assume that I don’t mind being constantly snooped on. They probably assume that I don’t mind them building a secret profile of me so long as they use it to deliver me targeted advertisements and great vacation deals. They're wrong. That's why they don't ask.

Think about the data that is being collected, stored, analyzed and used on tens of millions of Internet users every day. Sure there are ways to opt out. I can set my browser to make it harder to track me. I can demand that privacy policies be followed. But it’s not always easy to know who is doing the tracking, how they're doing it or how to get them to stop. Worse, there’s no knowing for sure whether they really will respect my wishes or will continue to track me, even after I tell them not to.

The Trackers would probably also argue that they're not collecting personally identifiable information on me, that it’s all anonymous and can in no way be tied to the real me. Maybe. Maybe not. It’s hard to know for sure.

Paranoid? Maybe. But the Federal Trade Commission last week held a two-day meeting to discuss precisely these same issues. Two days before the meeting a group of privacy folks asked the FTC to consider a Do Not Track list similar to its Do Not Call list. So I guess there are others out there who feel the same way.

What about you?