Week 3 EOC: Internet Privacy vs Market Research

As an internet user I believe I should have the ability to have my privacy not only protected but kept out of market research for companies to buy and sell to the highest bidder. According to an article on Forbes.com titled How Much Privacy? A company called ComScore Networks is a marketing company that is using the internet to capture marketing research in a manner that some might consider to be wrong. In the article ComScore says “its participants are willing exhibitionists, happily selling their online privacy for gift certificates and free screensavers. But two computer scientists are raising new questions about comScore, claiming that company tracking software is being installed without consent on an unknown number of computers.” (http://www.forbes.com/2006/12/07/internet-security-research-tech_cx_ll_1208comscore.html). I think that this is an illegal way to find and research people’s personal marketable information. According to an article writen by Lorrie Faith Cranor, "The Internet and computerized databases make automated collection and processing of information particularly easy and convenient. In fact, for the typical Web site operator, it's easier to collect information about Web site visitors than to figure out how to configure a Web server not to collect that information. As a result, there are now zillions of databases silently collecting mostly innocuous "click-stream" data from everyone who surfs on by." (http://lorrie.cranor.org/pubs/networker-privacy.html).