The modern Internet has created a digital landscape that marketers thrive upon to collect personal data and web surfing habits in order to form more targeted money-making messages. While many people are struggling to keep their information private by refusing tracking cookies and “opting out” of Internet tracking, others are actually choosing to put even more of their habits in the public eye.
An emerging group of social networking applications allows users to track and share their Internet surfing history in real time, as they browse. The owner of one of these applications said that he devised the idea for sharing interests with college friends who lived in other parts of the United States.
Paul Jones, developer of Dscover.me, came up with the site as communication with his old friends waned, even with social networking options. “At one point we just said to each other, ‘What if we could just show each other what we’re reading and watching and shopping for?’ ”
Dscover.me, along with similar browser-tracking applications Voyurl and sitesimon, are beginning to find an audience with those who think that baring everything online isn’t such a big deal, mainly the younger generation of web users. But all of this sharing could have implications that we have yet to understand and some experts are cautioning against the trend, predicting that too much sharing could lead to a loss of individuality.
“In some ways, this might produce a society in which we end up conforming to buying the same products, seeing the same information, going on the same trip, depending on the same sources,” Mina Tsay, a communications professor at Boston University, told the NY Times.
However, proponents, including Voyurl founder Adam Leibsohn, believe that all of this tracking is a good thing because it allows people a view of their behavior that they would otherwise not have.
“If we’re not following you, no matter what, somebody else is,” Leibsohn said. “The difference in this scenario is, we show it back to you. It’s holding up a mirror to a reflection that I don’t think people knew they had.”
I can definitely see this argument from both sides, but one thing that people seem to keep forgetting is that all of this shared data can be used against them. Currently, if someone wants this information, a judge must issue a subpoena as in the case of alleged “hackers” that Sony is hunting down by gathering the data of those who visited George “GeoHot” Hotz’s website. Of course, this case is pretty extreme, but flinging accusations based upon site visits isn’t unheard of. Just think of the field day anti-piracy organizations would have with visitors to file-sharing websites who post their browsing tracks openly.
