Worried about online privacy? That’s just the way the cookie crumbles

IT is not a coincidence that when you have been googling south-east Asia, your Facebook page is inundated with ads for holidays in Thailand.

Neither is it a sign from the retail gods that you need to buy the pair of shoes that you’ve browsed once, when its image keeps popping up on your social media accounts.

It’s not that you’ve been cyberstalked, but the practice of retargeting – using your internet browsing habits to track your preferences – is widely used by companies to send you advertisements of products and services you’ve googled.

Rohan Isaacs, director at Norton Rose Fulbright said it was all done through the use of cookies (a small piece of data sent from a website and stored in your web browser) and tracking pixels (the basic unit of programmable colour on a computer display).

“Pixels embedded within an advertising slot on a web page can access cookies previously dropped on to your computer by the advertiser. These cookies give the advertiser information about previous searches and browsing habits, enabling the advertiser to target your preferences.”

Isaacs said whether this was an invasion of privacy depended on one’s point of view.

“Services which obtain this information about you would argue that you have consented to it. You aren’t forced to use the service after all. Their privacy policies invariably explain what they do, at least in general terms,” he said.

Nathan Desfontaines, Managing Director at CyberSec agrees. “Privacy policies are loosely explained. Websites tell us that they are using cookies and give us an option to opt out by disabling cookies. But doing so means some features of a website may not work.”

Desfontaines also agrees that retargeting is not illegal. “But the problem is that we are not given an option to decide if we want to opt in.”

And for that reason, he said, this practice tested ethical borders and had the potential to embarrass users.

“If a woman thinks she is pregnant, for example, and googles contraceptives or abortion and then moves away from her desk. Then when these adverts pop up on her screen everyone can see what she has been browsing,” Desfontaines said.

“By using Google to browse the net you have automatically opted to be tracked if you already use other Google unpaid services such as Gmail, Google Maps and Google Drive.”

“To access many of these services you need to log into a Google account. And as long as you’re logged in, Google knows exactly who you are and mines everything you are doing within the Google environment for information about you,” Isaacs said.

“They use this information to monetise their services by selling advertisers the ability to target you through pixels and cookies… if the product is free, you’re the product.”

Both Isaacs and Desfontaines agree retargeting is far from illegal because we typically grant websites permission to track us and browsing habits on their own don’t generally constitute personal information.

But, if you don’t want to be tracked, you can turn cookies off on your browser setting or switch browsers.

Original Post – The Independent Newspaper