Regardless of who you are or where you stand on privacy, if you’re visiting web sites (even this one) there are complicated scripts and programs tracking what you look at, what links you click on and what your overall online tendencies are.

The majority of this monitoring is not malicious in nature (by most people’s opinions). The monitoring is done by advertisers so that they can best see how to wisely spend their online advertising budgets. They want the most bang for their bucks, just as most individuals do.

And there is great benefit to individuals and end users in this monitoring. Basically, the more profitable advertisers can make their investments online, the more revenue that pours into developers and publishers of online content.

Given that the monitoring doesn’t personally identify people online, but rather creates a pool of data for advertisers to review and use for spotting trends or tendencies in behaviors, is this a privacy issue that needs to be watched and federally regulated?

Governments and businesses do the same sort of monitoring every day in neighborhoods across the country. They build elaborate models from statistical data on vehicle and pedestrian traffic for every street and road in your community; and they do it without asking your permission or informing you of their monitoring. Is this an invasion of privacy?

Technorati Tags: ,