The Internet is people

Dear PropellerHeads: It sure feels like the Internet is snooping on me? Am I right?

A: First, with apologies to Charlton Heston, the Internet is people.

So, keep in mind the folks behind Google, Facebook, Double-Click, YouTube, Yahoo, and many others are responsible for your justifiable paranoia.

Let's set a scenario. You are hungry and you search the web for cheesecakes using your Chrome (Google) browser. Maybe you even buy a few. But later, you notice when you stop by MSNBC.com that there is a cheesecake advertisement with a coupon on the page. No way is that a coincidence. Right? Right!

As long as you are hungry, let's talk about cookies.

When you visit a website, it is common for the site to store a small file on your computer called a cookie. This is typically used to help a site remember important information about your browsing session as you move between different pages on the site. This is especially true if you haven't yet identified yourself by creating a profile or signing in.

For example, cookies might be used to remember the contents of your shopping cart in case you abandon it and come back a couple of days later. Sometimes they are used to keep you logged in to a site, so you don't have to re-enter your username or password every time you visit.

Normally, cookies are restricted to being read by the domain (website) that established them. So, for instance, cnn.com can't peek at the nbcnews.com cookie information.

However, there are some third-party sites, like double-click.com, that are used by web advertisers. They track your web search activity which is later used by sites that make money with web advertising to customize the pages you see based on recent browsing activity.

Over time, these sites can accumulate a large amount of information about your web travels and develop an uncanny knack for customizing your content. For instance, if you are logged in to Google, for Gmail or other Google services, your search history is recorded by Google and associated with your ID. You might want to visit http://google.com/history and see what Google has been tracking on your behalf.

The problem is that you might not want your web or search history to be freely shared by all of these sites. What can you do? You have an option to refuse cookie usage while you browse, but some sites will not perform well if you do so.

Many of the browsers understand your interest in privacy and now support no-track or anonymous options. This includes Google Chrome's "incognito" browsing, Microsoft Internet Explorer's "in-private" browsing, and "private" browsing on Opera, Safari, and Firefox. These options allow for cookie creation during browsing in order to help maintain website functionality, but delete the cookies when you leave a site. Likewise, web browsing history and page caching is disabled when browsing this way.

Facebook is a different story. Based on likes, follows, comments, and other activities, from both you and your friends, Facebook's advertising is highly customized to what they hope matches your interests. Facebook's privacy setting can be used to mute the effects of this, but frankly, you freely put so much of your private information on Facebook, the barn door is already open. You could consider Facebook Disconnect (http://bit.ly/11uvcpd) or similar browser plug-ins. But really, if this stuff bothers you, Facebook is probably not the place for you.

The World Wide Web Consortium (http://bit.ly/Uvl1Qp) is working on standardizing no-track web browsing for all of us. Thanks W3C! Visit www.donottrack.us to determine if your browser is playing along.

To be fair, the reason the advertisers go to all this trouble is to make the ads more effective. That is, you will buy more of their stuff. The balance is that the content is free. Pretty much the same as watching TV commercials - just smart ones.

A quote we Propellerheads like is "If you're not paying for it, you're not the customer. You're the product being sold."

When the PropellerHeads at Data Directions aren't busy with their IT projects, they love to answer questions on business or consumer technology. Email them to questions@askthepropellerheads.com or contact us at Data Directions Inc., 8510 Bell Creek Road, Mechanicsville, VA 23116. Visit our website at www.askthepropellerheads.com.