A number of websites track users and their data online to gather valuable information regarding their browsing habits. As per the laws, these companies must maintain the anonymity of a user in doing so. To circumvent this, the advertisers are now redefining the term ‘anonymous.’
Anonymous tracking essentially means that any third-party must not be able to tie your name or personal information with your browsing habits. For instance, a third-party may gather your name, it may gather data related to the websites you visit, but it must not be able to tie the two.
However, that is exactly what many advertisers are doing. And they are doing this by vaguely redefining the term ‘anonymous.’ For instance, many online advertisers and data tracking companies are of the opinion that ‘anonymous tracking’ means they can gather all your personal data but not your ‘full’ browsing history.
These advertisers are able to then devise customer-specific strategies based on the data gathered which, again, is not in line with the rule of anonymous tracking. Also, many websites now include social media buttons. Once you hit the button, your personal identity is also tied with your browsing activity.
But both the host website and the social network which is the destination, hold that they haven’t strayed from the principle of anonymous tracking. According to them, once a user lands on their page, they strip the gathered data of the user’s personal identity and thus, do not track his entire browsing history.
Again, this is simply a clever play of words which companies deploy to help stretch the limits ‘anonymous tracking’, much to the chagrin and damage of the users.
Courtesy: Venture Beat
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