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When the Web Surfs You
Don't mean to bombard anyone, just want people to read a bit and think
so they they can DISCUSS in class.
Robyn and Hannah
Title:
When the Web surfs You.
Source:
Christian Science Monitor, 02/22/2000, Vol. 92 Issue 62, p17,
0p, 2bw
Author(s):
Evarts, Eric C.
Section: Work & Money
WHEN THE WEB SURFS YOU
The Internet.
Consumers love it because they can quickly access the same information
used by experts, stockbrokers, and lobbyists - stock prices, government
reports, academic
studies.
The problem is, that very openness gives others -government, crooks,
marketers of legitimate and illegitimate products and services -access
to a consumer's personal
information.
Perhaps too much access.
To make purchases on the Web, consumers have to provide various personal
information -name, phone number, credit-card number, product
preferences,
sometimes financial and health records. Companies compile this
information, and the Internet makes it all too easy to share.
Kirk Bailey, security-policy manager at the Regence Group in Seattle,
discovered just how easy when he dared a group of fellow
information-security experts last
October to unearth as much information about him as they could.
For less than $100, the group came up with his birth certificate, Social
Security number, a complete picture of his personal finances, copies of
his home phone bills,
his college transcripts, an electronic copy of his signature - even his
cat's diet.
"They owned me," says Mr. Bailey. "[And] I'm a professional in
information security."
"I burn all my credit-card offers and bank statements. I was prepared to
be uncomfortable. And still, I was floored what they could have done to
me," he says.
The security experts had more than enough information to refinance
Bailey's house, shut off his electricity, or buy a car in his name. In
some cases, people who had
the information "bent over backward to share it," says Bailey.
(People-search sites - essentially online private investigators that
sell information to anyone for a few
dollars - are among the most visited on the Internet.)
Last month, 300,000 online customers of CD Universe also lost a sense of
their privacy when an extortionist, allegedly operating in Eastern
Europe, stole their
credit-card numbers and posted them on the Web.
Last year in the US there were more than 300,000 cases of identity
theft, where criminals gathered enough information to steal money from
bank accounts or open
credit cards in other people's names and ring up thousands of dollars in
purchases.
An ABC News poll taken last month said 40 percent of consumers worry
that computers are being used to invade their privacy.
Collecting personal information isn't new, of course. Government
agencies such as the Census Bureau, the IRS, and state motor-vehicle
registries have maintained
such databases for decades. And companies often ask for customers' phone
numbers "in case there is a problem."
But as computer networks allow more businesses to share databases, the
information has become valuable, says Stephen Altobelli, spokesman for
the Direct
Marketing Association (DMA). "The name Stephen Altobelli is worthless
[by itself]," he says. "What gives it value is being on a list with 20
other similar names."
Marketers buy and sell customer lists so they can target their
advertising via direct mail, e-mail, and Internet banners.
Last year consumers received 71 billion pieces of direct mail.
The problem is getting worse online, in part because consumers have been
reluctant to pay for information on the Web. "Consumers like free
access, but that means
sites have to make money on ads," says Laura Mazzarella, an attorney in
the Bureau of Consumer Protection at the Federal Trade Commission. The
more information
the sites can collect about people, the more they can charge for ads,
she says.
So companies entice consumers to share personal information with offers
of discounted services, cash, or prizes. The value of such incentive
programs on and off the
Web totals $3,000 per year for every American says Marian Salzman, head
of ad agency Young and Rubicam's Brand Futures Group.
A few Web sites, such as moneyformail.com, run by longtime consumer
activist Gerri Det-weiler, now pay people to read junk mail targeted to
their demographic
group. "One reason we're seeing so much public debate is that consumers
are feeling helpless," says Ms. Detweiler.
But others say putting a price on personal information cheapens it. "It
denigrates the value of privacy to put a price on it," says Simson
Garfinkel, a computer-security
expert and author of "Database Nation: The Death of Privacy in the 21st
Century."
And the value varies. The names of people with more than $1 million to
invest would be a gold mine to financial companies. But grouping the
names of consumers by
demographic only increases ad revenue from 0.6 cents per click to
perhaps as much as 1.5 cents, he says.
"The problem" Mr. Garfinkel says, is that "the people running American
business are so uneducated about privacy. They devise new systems all
the time to collect and
sell personal data without any consideration of a person's right to
privacy."
"E-commerce companies will often say, 'You must register, because that's
how we make money,' " says Tony Jenkens, who builds clients' e-commerce
sites at
consulting company Breakaway Solutions in Boston.
"If you're engaging in e-commerce, at a certain point it's impossible to
keep your own information private," says Marc Rotenberg, president of
the Electronic Privacy
Information Center in Washington.
So far, the Federal Trade Commission has taken a hands-off approach,
recommending to Congress last summer that the industry regulate itself.
To keep that friendly
government relationship, the FTC says companies that collect data must:
tell consumers that they're collecting it and what they intend to use it
for; let consumers see
files collected about them to verify their accuracy; and let consumers
opt out of having their information sold to others.
"We think it's possible to create a marketplace where individual
consumers can protect personal information [that way]," says Mr.
Altobelli of the DMA.
But critics say information is often collected without consent. With
appropriate regulation, it would be possible to track data so the
government or individuals could
see where it was collected says Mr.
Garfinkel. Legal penalties could be established for those who use
information for the wrong reasons.
For now, keeping private information private is a never-ending job of
keeping one step ahead of marketers and impersonators.
While laws limit what information federal agencies can sell, business
records are increasingly being sold to aggregators such as Polk, Acxiom,
and big credit-reporting
agencies. For a price, state agencies, municipal governments, and
federal public records will also provide data about individuals.
In the future, warns Mr. Garfinkel, this information could be combined
with a person's picture (from a driver's license, for instance), a
digital copy of a signature, a
genetic map, and exact location (through public-security cameras and
computer chips in cars and clothing).
Internet companies already are developing new technologies to collect
details about people who use their sites.
DoubleClick, for example, has been widely criticized this year for its
merger with personal-information aggregator Abacus, because the deal
will combine online
behavior with people's names.
iClick bills itself as a customer-service tool that can interact with
Web shoppers as they browse a site. If they linger on a page without
buying, an iContact agent can
appear on their browser and offer to help them shop. In some cases the
agent can even take over a person's browser, say, to fill in an order
form.
In 50 years, predicts Watts Wacker, a Westport, Conn.-based futurist
with SRI Consulting, "privacy will be an artifact. It won't be relevant
to the way we live our
lives."
By Eric C. Evarts, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor