Data Privacy and Tracking

Overview
Data privacy can be defined as “the aspect of information technology (IT) that deals with the ability an organization or individual has to determine what data in a computer system can be shared with third parties.” More simply put “information privacy” (Rouse). Companies want to track user data to better advertise to user needs. For instance, HTTP cookies, flash cookies, and evercookies help to target and understand consumers.

Legislation Surrounding Information Privacy
In the United States, there has been a large amount of legislation passed that has given internet users more privacy which can prevent people from tracking you.

In the past ten years, there have been five major acts passed that give privacy in many different ways. Certain acts protect the information of children with an online presence. There has been an act passed that the government cannot “wiretap” transmissions of electronic data, and there have been other acts passed that protect our health and financial information which is held digitally. The main challenge with electronic data is being able to utilize the data and still protecting a person’s privacy. The way we use and store data on the web is continuously changing, and legislation is as well. It is important legislatures continue to reassess compliance with data privacy regulations as things are constantly changing.

Users Attempt to Combat Data Tracking
Once awareness of the search bubble phenomenon had been generated, there has been increasing concern about the degree of data tracking that is being done on internet users. Search engines use page ranking algorithms and use personal information to yield a search results order based on user preferences. Social media uses algorithms to this effect to, to effectively filter out information users don't show a preference to. This constant filtering out of information can lead to intellectual isolation and users care about taking extra measures to counteract this phenomenon.

For instance, users may opt to use the private or anonymous browsing feature offered by web browsers. Using this offers a small degree of privacy, though it has been shown this information can be easily recovered because data is still being retained.

Users may also create an online persona or an avatar to try and protect their information. However, the line between virtual world identities and characteristics of the real people behind them may begin to blur, if the online representation starts to blend into a users self-representation.