We live in a world where privacy is becoming an increasingly foreign concept. The Internet, which on the one hand still perpetuates a sense of anonymity, has in fact become the biggest catalyst for the loss of privacy. I'm not going to start talking to Big Brother, but I want to point out that internet marketers know about you as a consumer, so you can be better informed. Because knowledge is power, isn't it?
First, let me talk about your digital footprint. Every website on the Internet runs somewhere on a web server. Regardless of whether this server is located in an attractive data center halfway around the world or in the basement of a guy down the street, a web server is just an application running on a computer connected to the Internet. The server has a unique IP address that is associated with the domain name. Regardless of whether you go to this domain name or enter its URL address, your computer connects to this server.
Once you have established a connection, you will see web pages that remain on this server, and the server will begin recording information about your computer. It records the IP address of your computer, the date and time when you “landed” where you came from (either the URL of the site you just left, or the one you entered directly from entering the URL in the address bar) , and what type of search string you typed if you came from a search engine. It also records the operating system of your computer and the web browser you use.
After you are on the site, the server will track your movements inside this site when you click from page to page. As soon as you leave the site, it will record the time you left, the last page you visited on the site, and the URL of the site you jumped to. It also records which country you are in, what it knows from your IP address, and also if you come from an educational, non-profit, or business environment based on a domain extension in your network.
Although it will not know your exact location, it is fairly close geographically based on your IP address. If you do not have your own IP address, which most household consumers do not have, you have been assigned an IP address by your Internet service provider (ISP). If your Internet provider is in the next city, you will probably see some ads giving you in this city.
Many sites also throw cookies on your computer when you visit their sites. If the previous information about your computer was stored on a web server (to which you have no access and cannot be controlled), cookies remain on your computer only for a certain time, and you can delete them just as you can delete any file on your computer. Each website decides whether to refuse the cookie and the duration of the cookie.
Now that we have learned that the web servers know about you, tell us that they do not know about you. Web servers do not have the ability to find out which other websites you have visited, other than the site where you were right before coming to their site and the site you landed right after leaving your site. Your computer will record every site you visit, but, like cookies, you can at least manage your history if you want. Web servers also do not know your name, age, address, altitude, social security number, interest, etc. Or any other files (for example, documents) on your computer. Although web servers do not collect this information, this does not mean that databases that integrate with these web servers do not.
Each time a website asks you to log in, fill out a form, fill out a profile, etc., the data you provide will populate a database owned by this site owner or a third party working with this site owner. After you provide this information, you can never fully control this information, because you do not have direct access to the server that hosts this database.
When you combine informational web servers with your movements and information that you freely enter into databases on websites, you get a lot of information that marketers can use to provide you with offers. The better internet marketers know you, the more customized offers they can give you.
For example, if you like classical music, you may have noticed how the announcement of your local orchestra appears when you log into your Facebook account. Or, if you enter a tennis message from your gmail account, you may have noticed an announcement about the appearance of tennis missiles. How do they do it? In fact, simple. You were the one who scored Classical Music as an interest in your Facebook profile. And because gmail owns email servers that keep your emails, its powerful search engines match the text in your emails with promotional offers that Google customers pay.
This does not mean that a Google or Facebook employee reads your emails or messages. With millions of users, they have no time for this, and they are not needed. They use their technology to match. Therefore, when your local symphony conventions run ad campaigns on Facebook, they may indicate that their ads are displayed only on user accounts in their target geographic area that have shown interest in certain keywords.
Examples of Google and Facebook illustrate instances where they know a lot about you because of the information you specifically gave them. In these situations, you can really welcome these ads, because you’ve received ads that are more relevant to you than those that you don’t have.
Even if you do not specifically provide information about yourself, aggregated information collected by web servers and cookies can still create a profile for you. Most major search engines record your IP address and everything you’ve been looking for to use this address. (Ixquick.com is an exception to this rule.) Although the search engine may not know your gender and age, you can make a pretty good assumption that you are a woman since birth if the prevalence of searches from your IP address for child-related items and information . And if you return to the site that previously reset the cookie on your computer, the website will know that you are a returning visitor. If you visit often, he may treat you differently than the visitor he assumes exists for the first time.
Sellers who sell products on the Internet use cookies and IP addresses to compensate web publishers for sending them traffic. For example, say that you are reading a skiing blog and you see a banner ad for backcountry.com. If you hover over an ad, your browser must show you the destination of this link before you even click on it. Most likely, it will not directly link to backcountry.com. Instead, it will link to the tracking server, which backcountry.com uses to manage its campaigns. It will contain a bunch of code that essentially refers to the campaign, the image of the ad and where the link should redirect it. If you click the link, you will be redirected to backcountry.com, but not before it puts the cookie on your computer and records the display and clicks on the tracking system. If you buy something from backcountry.com, the tracking system knows the site for skiers from which you originally came, and will credit the owner of this site when selling. The site owner will receive payment if the commission was originally agreed. Even if you don’t buy the rights then, but come back later (up to 120 days, in some cases) and buy, the ski site still gets a loan for this sale. How? Because of the cookies that are still on your computer. When you make a purchase, a small invisible pixel in the code of the thank you page indicates to the tracking system that the sale is completed, knows that you came from the site for skiers because of the cookie on your computer and the credit of the ski area, respectively. If you’ve finished deleting your cookie between when it was first placed and when you bought the product, it will not be able to credit the sale at the ski area if the tracking system also does not track IP addresses (which are most absent).
Internet marketers also use email to track campaign performance. Almost every time you subscribe to something online with your email address, you will be sent to someone’s mailing list. Marketers use email management systems that allow you to send one email address to thousands of your subscribers. CAN-SPAM legislation requires that these letters have a refusal link at the bottom of the letter. If you do not like to receive offers, you can refuse. But while you do, marketers can track wherever you are, email messages, read them, go to the website of them and actually buy something as a result. Even after you have refused, you remain in your databases with a flag that you have refused.
You can see that your movements do not go unnoticed on the Internet. Internet merchants, networks and other marketers are trying to understand you as best they can to satisfy their ads and offers. As technology continues to improve, and as major players like Google continue to use a disproportionate amount of web traffic on their networks (and acquire companies with which you have relationships), online marketers will know more about you than now. Whether it remains to be seen whether this will lead to an improvement in the consumer environment, creating hype-targeted advertisements or frustrating consumers as a result of further erosion of confidentiality.
