Cybersecurity Checkup© for July
Targeted Advertising
Are you a victim of targeted advertising? When you search for an item, does the item start to follow you on subsequent web pages. It can be frustrating as you start to feel your anonymity disappear.
Target advertising has helped websites become and remain viable. Internet advertising earns over 40 billion dollars annually.
So, how does target advertising work, why can it pose a cyber threat to you, and what can you do to stop Internet tracking?
Target advertising is made possible by the collaboration of companies that share your information through ad networks. One of the ways that your information is shared is by a tracking cookie, which is a small data file that the ad network embeds into your browser. What many people do not realize is that these ad networks have been collecting information about you for years. There is data held in databases of your likes and dislikes that has been recorded since the first time you clicked, rolled over an image, and or searched for a certain item. But cookies are not the only way of tracking the digital you. Technologies such as web beacons, which is a transparent graphic image placed on a site, that records a user action, or e-tags, can track actions of a user as well.
There are a couple issues with target advertising, which you need to be aware of, as you undergo your Cybersecurity Checkup© this month. First, tracking cookies as well as the ad network, pose a threat to your online privacy, which in turn can lead to identity theft. The more sites you visit, the more ad networks know about you, as a digital profile is built of your likes and dislikes. While there may be a convenience and a “helpfulness” for smarter advertising, we must be careful, knowing what to share and what not to share. A second concern is focused on the ad networks and the digital advertisers. How are they securing your information? Imagine the amount of information someone can gain about you from your online presence and quite frankly, there are very little regulatory controls. While I am not a fan of regulations, there is a need in this unique marketing industry for governmental controls. Many of the ad network advertisers are looking to combine your online digital profile with your offline activities. The argument behind this merging of the online/offline profile is so that companies can have a better picture of what you are buying. Thus loyalty programs, such as Plenty, have popped up so that additional information can be garnered from you and sold.
For example, Allstate moved all customer data to a data management platform, which will help Allstate, fine-tune customer lifetime-value scoring. This data will then be merged with other online ad networks and be able to measure the offline target campaign towards you. The idea is being able to predict markets, and transfer budgets quickly to address real time desires of the consumer.
So what can you do? While you may not want to go totally off the Internet and just pay cash, there are a few simple steps you can take to help secure your cyber self. What is important here is to remember that this is not a one-time effort. Similarly to checking your credit scores, this is an area where you must be vigilant.
The first step and the easiest is to go to the website listed: http://www.aboutads.info/choices/ There is an opt out tool called: online behavioral advertising. Online behavioral advertising tool will scan your computer and see which companies are targeting their adds to you. Additionally, the tool will provide you with a choice to remove the cookies. While this is easy, you should repeat this action often, because many times consumers are opted back in to the programs.
Second step is more complicated, because it involves large companies such as Google, and Facebook, which collect information about you. Each company will have a unique way of targeting ads towards you, and will have advertisement settings with options of opting out, take the time and opt out.
Third step is to disable cookies in your browser settings, but first you should remove the tracking cookies that are already in your browser. With most of the common Internet browsers, there is a Privacy tab. Click on the Privacy tab, and you will see cookies. Click on remove cookies, or you may want to keep a few cookie settings, but in either case you will be able to choose.
Stay safely connected by being aware of your Internet browsing, and watch out for those loyalty programs, ask yourself is the “reward” worth the data they are collecting about you and your family?
