Do Not Track Me on Internet

The average person has heard of "cookies" and know that vendors and online sites track online visitors. But do you know to what extent? Did you know that Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Adobe and many other companies also exhaustively track your every move online?

Now as marketers, we understand the importance of this business practice to know what are an online surfers interests and preferences and hence, submit content and ads that appeal to them.  As consumers, for some, it's an invasion. If privacy reigns supreme in your list of Resolutions, fear not.  There are programs and FREE programs you can download to prevent sites from following your online

Believe it or not there are built-in anti-tracking features in Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Mozilla's Firefox, Google's Chrome and Apple's Safari web browsers. However, they have earned a reputation for being complicated and confusion.

Good news: a program called Ghostery is simple to download and use. Ghostery automatically blocks all tracking mechanisms issued by several hundred companies on an extensive list that includes two of the most expansive tracking networks: Google's DoubleClick and Microsoft's Media Network.  It also stops Facebook from amassing data about every web page you visit that has a Facebook "Like" button.

Other well known programs include TrackerBlock or Adblock Plus. The latter is best known for its ability to block online advertisements from being visually displayed on Web pages. But it can also be configured to block tracking mechanism, and more users are setting it up that way.

In a recent survey of 668 TrackerBlock users, 87% of the respondents said the reason they use an anti-tracking took is because they do not want anyone collecting data about what they do online. It's all about privacy.

We, the BlogSisters, actually decided to download an anti-tracker for a different reason. As some of you know, we both have marketing backgrounds.  The basis of marketing is to know everything about your customers. Online tracking is cost efficient and therefore it helps companies spend marketing dollars more wisely in creating and targeting ads. Online marketing is a burgeoning industry--it creates jobs. Something important to remember in this recession.  But we respect a consumer's right to privacy. So why did we download an antitracker? Well Christine was experiencing regular computer failure or what appeared to be virus attacks from "adware". She was suspicious that it was tied to ads.  In conducting research, she learned about programs to block ads and tracking.

She downloaded Ghostery. Then in the process, a page listed the level of blockage for each browser. It turns that the Internet Explorer had the least protection and others like Mozilla Firefox blocked most tracking. So Christine then downloaded Mozilla Firefox as another Internet browser. After using both Firefox and Ghostery, she has experienced zero virus alerts or the famous blue or black screen.

The downside. If you are a marketer, or blogger like us, then the Google ads we place on our blogs will not be seen. By clicking on those ads, we earn 5 cents each click. So in essence we are losing money by sharing this posting.  Well  5 cents for a small blog is not a loss. We believe in helping people making their lives a little easier. We hope this helps!