Neurohancer

The social networking site Facebook made headlines when it introduced a new feature called Beacon, which uses e-mail addresses to track what members buy online and publishes the information for all their friends to see.

RICHARD BORGE/Special Contributor

Outraged Facebook users and privacy advocates forced the company to make it easier to opt out of Beacon, but their victory hardly settled the larger issue of privacy in the digital age.

The companies you patronize know what you do, what you make, what you buy, what you watch, what you read and where you are right now.

The situation creates serious risks.

Hackers could steal your credit card number. Police could monitor your political activities. Potential employers could track down old newspaper stories about your antics in college.

But the potential benefits counterbalance the risks.

Online accounts help you manage money. Web searches help cops find crooks. Details about you let companies serve you better.

“Technology is changing faster than our understanding of how to use and regulate it,” said Alissa Cooper, a policy analyst for the Center for Democracy & Technology, a nonprofit group that advocates for new privacy laws.

“Most people have no idea how much of their personal information is being collected and stored.”

Discussions about data gathering generally begin with Google, which gathers an unbelievable amount of data.

To begin with, Google remembers every search forever. It also remembers which computer submitted every search for 18 to 24 months.

People who use Google’s e-mail, calendar, word processor, spreadsheets and reader share far more information with the company.

Gmail computers “read” every e-mail and use keywords to choose what advertisements to show customers. Some Google Calendar settings let anyone view a user’s schedule. Google Docs and Spreadsheets store everything in Google computers. Google Reader keeps a copy of every news story and blog post that users see.

Google can even track every Web site that users visit and index every file inside their computers.

Heavy Google users effectively share their entire lives with company computers: credit card numbers, bank balances, love letters, travel destinations, book purchases, medical concerns, everything.

People who use other services share just as much information.

Aside from Ask.com, which lets users tell it not to remember things about them, all search engines remember searches. Yahoo’s newest e-mail platform “reads” messages, too, and converts words in message texts into links to advertisers. Other e-mail services are experimenting with similar technology. (continued)

Companies harvesting personal information from Web activity | Dallas Morning News | News for Dallas, Texas | Dallas Business News | Dallas Morning News

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