Internet users these days are finding themselves boxed ever more into a corner. Criminals come at them from one side, looking for private data for illegal enterprises. Government agencies approach from the other side, eager to keep tabs on one and all.
And that’s to say nothing of online retailers, who have gotten so good at gathering data that they tend to get people to give up their personal information willingly.
Such is the fate of anyone who wanders into cyberspace — a life of trying to protect one’s privacy while surrounded by people who just want him to click on one ad that might give you what you want, but at the cost of some of your most important secrets.
After all, the wider a net these gatherers spread, the more likely they’ll get something valuable. That’s why so many companies have started to ask so many questions online — some of which are not at all necessary — in the hopes they can nudge people into offering up something useful.
“Here’s the average person’s chance to ask themselves if they really want to use the services of a business that gathers up more data than is needed,” says Susanne Dehmel, who focuses on data protection for the German computer trade association BITKOM.
It’s impossible to avoid some information being gathered up. Every online store — indeed every Web site — monitors the IP address of those who visit. That’s not much use by itself, says Dehmel, since those addresses are dynamic, generated new for each visit and without identifying links to the individual user.
That’s where cookies come in. “These are tiny crumbs of information, which my browser saves when it visits a site and which operators can evaluate,” says Jo Bager of German computer magazine c’t. Usually that evaluation isn’t done by the…