adam qureshi

Imagine you walk into a small town and in that small town you notice a small bookstore you walk into the store and browse it’s aisles, you pause and  pick up a book by Benjamin Franklin biography .But after thinking about it you decide you don’t have time for a book so you leave the store and keep walking down the street and this time you notice a video store . You walk in the video store  one of the first things you see is a poster advertising a biography book on Benjamin Franklin, HBO’s adaptation of the biography of Benjamin Franklin Hmmm…. coincidence maybe in the real world . But when you search the web seeing advertising that matches your personal interest its rarely coincidence, its called behavioral targeting and when its done site to site it’s achieved through tracking. Advertisers see it as an effective tool . some people worry that it’s a violation of their privacy. At the center of this debate is what’s known as the 3rd party cookie ( a small text file that stores information on your hardrive .  That’s what allows for this sort of tracking to take place . So how does it work ? well to understand 3rd party cookies we need to understand cookies ( not chocolate chip ! ) to understand cookies you have to go back to the creator of this type of program , his name is Lou Montulli he is a programmer he developed this “cookie” stuff . You see in 1994 when lou was working in e-commerce particularly shopping cart . At that time the web did not have any concept of memory   , like when you went to a site and selected  your stuff and put in into a shopping cart and selected more stuff and go through a check out process but as  soon as you left that page your stuff in the shopping cart would disappear   so Lou Montulli found a solution to this problem bam!”cookie” was born Lou also did some other brilliant stuff just check his wikipedia page if you want to learn about that super geek ninja . First there’s you and your computer and on your computer you have a browser e,g firefox,chrome,ie,safari. take your pick. Next you have the website whiche delivers the pages you visit , amazon, ebay, google etc … when you goto  a site the first time it wants to remember you so it assigns you an ID number contained in a little text file called a cookie then, whenever the server sends the page back to you it includes the cookie with it . That ID number lets the server remember the pages you visit the products you store in your shopping cart and whatever information you provided such as your username , your real name or your billing address in your computer the cookie is linked to the name of the site , so that everytime you visit it , the site recognizes you once the cookie is in place you can add a product to your cart without it ever disappearing . Unless you delete the cookie the product will stay in your cart . Even if you visit another page or another site . Its like having great customer service at a cafe where the “barista” remembers your name and your drink . Most people know that a site has access to your browsing history within its own site . It’s not surprising when amazon knows that you’ve looked ar benjamin franklin and  recommends another book in the same category and a lot of people find it helpful but it’s a little different when you visit a separate site and it seems to know about your taste too . Even in the early stages of cookie creation Lou was concerned about privacy issue.  A fair amount of  effort was given to keep websites from sharing cookies . Although limits are built into the cookies at the start  ”trackers” which are often ad networks have found ways to work around those limitations . Allowing them to follow your movements from site to site . They do this using the 3rd party cookie . Advertisers also request that websites install cookies on your computer . these are known as 3rd party cookies because they piggy back off the original site you visited . For example when you visit a site that has a banner ad , lets call it banner ad site 1 your browser is communicating with site ad 1 and the advertiser .  The advertiser like the original site you visited is also assigning your computer an ID number using the 3rd party cookie . This is what sets the stage for BEHAVIORAL TARGETING . So hows does a 3rd party cookie allow for BEHAVIORAL TARGETING .  Lets say you visit another site , site number 2 and that site also has a relationship with the same advertiser. When are arrive at the site the advertiser will check your cookie file for its’ cookie . If the cookie is there, the advertiser will remember you and show you a related ad it’ll also ad information saying you visited site number 2 . Ad networks are companies who do this type of tracking on 100’s or 1000’s of site they do business with . The bigger the ad network the greater its potential to track you online habits across the web and develop a profile of you and it can show you ads for products your more likely to buy. A lot of people who are concerned with privacy already know to delete their cookies but trackers have figured out ways to work around this . Other tracking methods are less noticeable and harder to remove . Some such a FLASH COOKIES can re-spawn cookies you have deleted with you knowing it . As the tracking business becomes a growing part of the online advertising eco-system . Privacy advocates are pushing for more regulation. They want greater transparency and better options for consumers to control whats known about them . so that when you browse the online bookstore and look at that copy of benjamin franklin biography  you can decide who knows about it .

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