Privacy (continued)

Myth of Web Anonymity
The "magical" experience of browsing the World Wide Web often lulls users into a false sense of security. The Web seems like a "virtual" space, where neither personal identities nor consequences for behavior exist.

However, Internet users reveal far more about themselves than they may realize. Many sites, for instance, deposit cookies on the user's hard drive. When this happens, the user has been tagged, in the same way that we see biologists tag wild animals on TV nature programs. With cookies on their hard drives, Web users divulge information such as the webpages they have visited most often and the length of time they have viewed certain pages. At Amazon.com, for instance, cookies enable the company to track the kinds of products visitors like, based on the interest they have shown in them on the Amazon website. This enables Amazon to better target marketing to users.

Supermarket Surveillance?
Similarly, the discount cards that have been introduced by supermarkets in recent years pose a dilemma for consumers. Use of such cards provides shoppers with discounts that would be unavailable otherwise. On the other hand, such cards enable supermarket chains to track every single purchase a consumer makes, resulting in a fairly rich profile of the consumer based upon preferences in food, drink, tobacco products, health and hygiene products, day and time of shopping, and more. The legal status of such records is debated, and some retailers have discontinued these programs.

These pages were written by Jeffrey L. Nyhoff and Steven H. VanderLeest and edited by Nancy Zylstra
© 2005 Calvin University (formerly Calvin College), All Rights Reserved.

If you encounter technical errors, contact computing@calvin.edu.