Cookies, Privacy, and Facebook owned by the CIA???

Cookies definitely helps a website to become easy to use and customized to the end user. The discussion states that most people mistrust cookies and delete them because they don’t want to be tracked in any way. Saying that, spyware removers (We are obviously talking about PC’s ;p) identify cookies as “bad” and prompt the user to delete all cookies.

Am I willing to give up my privacy in order to have an easier to use website? That depends. Why can’t I have an easier to use website without giving up my privacy? Has the online marketing industry fallen into an analysis paralysis where they can’t customize a website based on users past trends and initiatives but have to keep squeezing the lemons to see how many cups of lemonade I will drink? How much further does it have to go on until people realize that it is inevitable that a UI will track what their computer in some shape or form? On that note, it really depends on the Chief Architect and the deep pockets behind him/her.

With “privacy” in mind, the Terms of Agreement contracts that users sign up for can lead to far more deception than a cookie. How many people read the whole thing, Top-to-bottom, or just check-off that you read it anyway so you can proceed?

A great example is Facebook.com. Although the cookies on this site seem to be not of concern to many people which is fine because they like Facebook and use of its social utility. The real concern is that people need to know who owns Facebook and what those owners can do with it. If it is a group of stakeholders is one thing but what if it is owned by the government. What if the CIA in the United States funds it? Here is the truth, they do.

“They're terms and Conditions state:

By posting Member Content to any part of the Web site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license to use, copy, perform, display, reformat, translate, excerpt and distribute such information and content and to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such information and content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing.

Facebook has a "pulse" feature takes your information, and if you go to a university or college, will use that to compile statistical trends of college students. Essentially they find out about you, and use it to make a picture of the college based community on a whole. These statistics compiles data given by universities of members of Facebook. These statistics range from the mundane ("percentage of female college students with conservative views") to the odd ("Percentage of college students that have read Catcher in the Rye")

In essence, they will give out your information out to the highest corporate bidder.”

Further,

“Facebook was given funding of upwards to 12.7 million US dollars from Accel Partners. The managing partner of ACCEL is a man named James W Breyer. James Breyer was on the Board of the National Ventures Capital Association. A washington thinktank agency. He served personally with a man named Gilman Louie.

In-Q-TEL is a non-profit venture capital firm, a firm run by the Central Intelligence Agency to:

Invest in high-tech companies for the sole purpose of keeping the Central Intelligence Agency equipped with the latest in information technology in support of United States intelligence capability.”

Here is the link to the full article as this is just a snippet:

http://simulacram.vox.com/library/post/facebook-a-cia-front.html

This is where I see that the real issues lie.

Cookie facts:

# Cookies are merely small text files that can be deleted by the user at any time.
# Users can view cookie information using Notepad or any other text editor (look in your Temporary Internet Files folder).
# Although any user with physical access to your computer files can view cookie information, only the website that set its cookie information can retrieve it. In other words, www.domainA.com cannot view or retrieve www.domainB.com's cookies - this security feature is built into all known web browsers.
# Cookies cannot act maliciously on computer systems.
# Max cookie file size = 4Kb.
# Max cookies allowed per domain = 19.

In conclusion, I think that cookie information is important. I do agree with the general consensus that vendors should only set and process first-party cookies. Saying that, I am willing to give up privacy in order to have an easier-to-use website because I think websites should be customizable for the end user. I also appreciate when web developers give the users the option to customize the website themselves. In return, this information can also be used by the marketer to profile pages, and suggest these options to similar clients (CRM). I am also willing to give up my privacy so that ads I see on websites are likely to be more relevant to me because I don’t think I have a choice anyway. This approach is a passive approach. Google’s Adsense is an active approach to this and can be helpful. Who is saying that Google is not capturing the density of each page view during the scanning, interactive, and acquistion stages and compiling enormous customer data trends in their data-warehouse? Hint, they are because they store absolutely, everything. This is why Google is “free”.

Visit Capitalsal.com if you want help with Web Marketing or Web Analytics....heck even Web Development.

Best Regards,

AJ