| Exploiting Cookies |
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Web companies, desiring to know more accurate market data and customer demographics, have found ways to exploit cookie technology. Any website that has archived a user's personal information in a cookie may "synchronize" this cookie with another company's cookie as long as that company has an advertisement located somewhere on their server. Therefore, web servers that you may have never visited may still deposit cookies on your hard drive and have access to your identification and clickstream information.
A company called Doubleclick.com has been at the heart of the cookie technology and controversy since their conception. Doubleclick has been known to put single 1X1 pixel gifs on websites, that although virtually invisible to the user, are therefore capable of storing cookies and logging all sorts of form information including search engine queries. Doubleclick has archived an immense amount of personal information over the years. Recently, they threatened to compile and sell this information to companies as market data. Due to popular negative sentiment, they postponed this move until an indefinite future date. |