Continuing Class Discussion
September 26th, 2011The internet has changed exponentially over the last decade, global connectivity, smart phones, and the ever increasing processing capabilities of consumer computers have been driving factors in shaping the electronic online landscape. What was once considered the “new wild west” circa 2003 has become Big Brother’s favourite information super-encyclopaedia… or at least so it may seem. No this post will not be about the cyber-police, the ethics of illegal downloading, or hacking, no today I’m writing about anonymity, the internet, and what both of them have to do with modern marketing.
When you talk about online marketing nowadays it seems almost unavoidable that the conversation will eventually turn to social media and corporate information gathering. All the major social media websites engage in this; it’s they’re lifeblood and they need it to maintain operations (servers aren’t cheap and Facebook had 30,000 of them by 2009…). Of course to use these sites you must allow them permission to do this and regardless of any qualms we may have with surrendering our privacy the majority of us (800 million Facebook users anyway) will. The information we sign over is invaluable data for marketing firms who use specialized online advertisement to genuinely entice people based on they’re interests. Even your Google searches are logged and tracked through your computer’s IP address.
How can the savvy consumer maintain anonymity? Well like everything on the Internet you can do it for free but you have to be persistent. First of all the only thing social media sites ever require from you is an email and you can generate as many free accounts as you like on Gmail. There are also free programs like Tor that generate a new IP every time your computer accesses the Internet. So want your privacy back from ruthless marketers? Google it, at least that way they’ll know what you want.