The Threat of Online Privacy

The Internet has provided users with limitless possibilities to learn, share, interact and create, but as this Gary Kovacs keynote reveals, online privacy is becoming increasingly threatened as websites follow users in order to build behavioral profiles.

Behavioral tracking is an area that still has very few rules and regulations. Kovacs uses the information gathered from a program called Collusion to discuss the prevalence of behavioral tracking sites. The program uses blue dots to show which sites a user has visited and gray and red dots to show foreign sites that are now tracking that user. The reality is that people are being stalked on the Internet and are having profiles created without their consent so that companies can keep track of behavioral activities. Kovacs compares this to being followed by someone with a camera and notepad, a situation that no one in their right mind would allow.