week 5 eoc

The wall street journal conducted a study to see how website read what we do on the internet and then sell that information to other parties. On a new computer WSJ visited the top 50 sites and found out that 3,180 tracking files were placed on the computer. These tracking files often lay dormant gathering information that can be used to learn your daily activities and interest. These files assign you a number and soon you’re bombarded with ads and spam emails to your computer ultimately leaving you annoyed. This isn’t a new technology however in the last couple of years it has morphed into something bigger and some of these sites that have these files on it doesn’t even know. These things we call cookies are tracking our every move as soon as we turn the power on to our computers. From a marketing standpoint for business’s I feel that this is not a productive way of gaining information on your customers. To bombard them with spam to get them to buy your products? They should think of a program that lets you opt in to using it. Maybe some type of rewards program and emailing list that lets you learn your consumer so that you can better service their needs.

Now a lot of people may not know that they are being targeted but striping away my marketing researcher title as an American I do not like it. Eric Snowden said it best, simply “I don’t want to live in a country that does these things”. To me it’s a waste of time to spy on my every move when there are bigger problems foreign and domestic. Either or we can’t do anything about it if you want to use the internet. Only other option is to disconnect yourself from technology completely.