As more and more people use the Web to view information and to purchase products, they wonder to what extent their actions can be tracked.

When you are viewing a Web page, the text and images on your screen may actually reside on different servers on the Internet.  The HTML can direct the viewer's browser to display text from one site and images from several other sites.  In fact, on commercial sites, it is very common for the text to reside on one server and the advertisements to be pulled from other sites.  

One of the largest providers of banner advertisements is a company called DoubleClick.  There are DoubleClick ads on the tops of many different Web pages. So if you visit a site about car insurance and another site about the weather in Iowa, a DoubleClick ad might appear on the tops of pages from both sites. And (here's the interesting and scary part) DoubleClick will know which pages you looked at.  If you also checked out a site on diabetes and you once clicked on a link by mistake that took you to a pornographic site, DoubleClick could also know that you visited those sites.  In time, a record of many of your Web visits could be built up.  And if at one of the sites you filled out a form that asked for your name and address, those pieces of information could also be part of your file.

The way these sites keep track of visitors is by depositing "cookies" on the viwers' hard drives.

Read "The Cookie Controversy" by Lori Eichelberger on the Cookie Central site.
http://www.cookiecentral.com/ccstory/index.html

P3P: GREEN LIGHT FOR WEB PRIVACY?
Technology aimed at keeping users informed of how much information each site
requests is expected later this year.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2598004,00.html?chkpt=zdnn070500

supplemental:

Electronic Privacy Information Center Cookies Page
http://www.epic.org/privacy/internet/cookies/

Netscape Communications Security
COOKIES AND PRIVACY FAQ on Cookie Central
 http://www.cookiecentral.com/n_cookie_faq.htm

 Info about cookies on MS
 http://www.microsoft.com/info/cookies.htm

Cookies under fire in Yahoo! suit
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2429363,00.html

Advanced Web Programming site. contains info about security and privacy.

http://www.tiac.net/users/smiths/

Senate bill to target Web cookies
 http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2436112,00.html

Cookies Are Good, Bad, Good...
By Bill Machrone
February 4, 2000 issue of PC Magazine online
http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag/stories/reviews/0,6755,2425975,00.html

DoubleClick site: PrivacyChoices
http://www.privacychoices.org/


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