They are watching you....

This week I have been focusing on how Internet marketers can track consumer behavior: what they buy, where they go etc. and I found an article from earlier this month. http://www.inc.com/magazine/20081001/we-see-you.html
This points out that not only are marketers using the track ability of IP addresses, but also GPS to track where a consumer is going - and with PDAs and phones with such capabilities, they are always watching you.

According to the inventor of the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, "Sir Tim said he did not want his ISP to track which websites he visited."

"I want to know if I look up a whole lot of books about some form of cancer that that's not going to get to my insurance company and I'm going to find my insurance premium is going to go up by 5% because they've figured I'm looking at those books," he said.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7299875.stm

"Social network Facebook was widely criticised when it attempted to introduce an ad system, called Beacon, which leveraged people's habits on and off the site in order to provide personal ads." (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7299875.stm)

"We should look out for snags in the future," he said, pointing to the way email had been swamped by spam as an example of how things could go wrong. "Things can change so fast on the Internet."
But he promised that what web scientists would produce over the coming years "will blow our minds".

He makes a good point, with the capabilities to track users every move, although initially is has been designed to customize content and provide a 'personalized' experience, this technology could be abused. Something to think about, they are watching you!