Forward-looking Internet experts predict that one day the Internet may become a utility - every bit as life changing as electricity. That it will deliver instant information anytime, anyplace, and will be fast, natural, easy, intelligent and trusted, but the technical reality keeps pulling that transformation back. The Internet remains in a messy global build-out stage and people are finding themselves the human guinea pigs for this technology.
So the long-term impact of the Internet on global society is still undetermined, and most likely will change along with how our use of the Internet changes. One clear area where the Internet has proven to have negative consequences is in the area of privacy. What follows here will begin to explain the unseen information caching aspect of the business that is the Internet.
There is no doubt, the Internet is changing our lives in significant ways, but at what price? The ease with which information can move around in the digital age means more information is shared and disseminated than ever before - and that includes information you do not want everyone in the world (literally!) having access to. From the skeptic's viewpoint, the Internet's future is closing in on us. It is a future in which every detail of our lives is noted, stored and, more often than not, sold to marketers and advertisers, conscientious service-providers and con-artists alike.
If you feel vulnerable, you should. Your privacy is being violated on a daily basis by the companies you buy from and the organizations you interact with. They may be recording information about you on their computers. If you think you can avoid the online world, you are sadly mistaken. Like it or not, the online world has already found you.
The process of harvesting information, referred to as "data mining," is a huge, booming business. When you register your pet, your house, or your car, pay your taxes, use a credit card, send in a warranty, subscribe to a magazine or conduct any of the hundreds of activities that comprise normal life, you leave behind information about yourself. In recent years, the quality and detail of information about our lives has skyrocketed. In the old days - what we can call "B.C." for "before computers" - credit card bureaus and junk mailers collected information about people from the purchases they made and the warranty cards they mailed in, but the companies had to record the information by hand, and cross-referencing of the material was an inaccurate and unwieldy process. They were able to target market groups by gender, age, ethnicity, neighborhood and so on, but with nowhere near the precision they do now.
Magazines sell their subscription lists to direct marketers, too. Increasingly, so do other institutions such as schools, churches, banks, insurance companies, and mail order companies. They do it mostly without your knowledge and, in some cases, contrary to your consent. To these companies, information about their customers belongs to them, not you. They consider the money they make from selling the information to be part of their profit stream.
Businesses are not immune to the same kind of targeting. There is such interest in business profiles that many companies build extensive databases, company profiles, and reports on industries and competitors. In addition, companies target specific businesses and follow their every movement to get new sales leads, and scour publications and all kinds of information to get a jump on a trend or to stay a step ahead of the competition. Three of the leading U.S. data mining companies - Metromail, (now Experian), First Data Corporation, and Acxiom - control huge databases with demographic, geodemographic, psychographic and behavioral information. First Data claims to maintain a database of more than 160 million individuals, and ten million U.S.-based businesses. Metromail Corporation claims to sell data on ninety-five percent of U.S. households.
This data includes our birth dates, how often we travel, what we buy, prescriptions we use and whom we telephone. In the U.S., some companies also gather, store and sell Social Security Numbers - numbers that uniquely identify every U.S. citizen and are essentially the golden key to a cache of private information. The major U.S. credit bureaus - Experian, Equifax, and Trans Union - maintain databases with information about people's jobs, income, bank accounts, credit limits and most significantly, credit card transactions.
Our website is not responsible for the information contained by this article. Articleinput.com is a free articles resource thus practically any visitor can submit an article. However if you notice any copyrighted material, please contact us and we will remove the article(s) in discussion right away.
Note: This article was sent to us by: Ethan B. Kendall at 08202010
1. New uses of the Internet emerge almost daily
All articles are property of their respective authors. Please read our Privacy Policy!
© 2009 ArticleInput.com.
Partners: Damenmode