Online Anonymity: A Fleeting Assumption

The implications of advanced data mining and personalized consumer experience on the Web seem to foreshadow an upcoming storm in commercial enterprise in the 21st century.

The apparent situation becomes obvious by the millions of investment dollars being spent on up-and-coming companies like Adchemy who aggregate and employ some of the most brilliant minds of our time in search of cutting edge computing techniques and algorithms designed to highly influence current standards in data mining, machine learning, and statistical inference (forming conclusions based on statistical data).

These companies hope to exploit masses of online data (generally) collected without the consent of participating consumers with the intention of personalized marketing and customer experience on the Web.

As explained by the chief executive of Adchemy here:

“It [Adchemy] doesn’t really identify a person,” but “it can identify the sorts of people -– by age, gender and interests -– that advertisers want to pinpoint.”

Basically, the company doesn’t reveal names to advertisers, and thus claims privacy is concealed. But what I wonder is that if all facets of a person’s life are available and being capitalized on by firms using algorithmic aggregators for “personalized online experience,” what’s the difference!? They’re tracking our movements down to the IP address through which we connect our computers to the Web. If you’re the sole user of your pc, then you could pretty much deduce that, to them, your name isn’t even relevant, and indeed your IP will work splendidly in identifying you and your not-exactly private activities. Companies like Accenture who invested heavily in Adchemy over the past year, know exactly whats up.

The blunt truth about the commercial implications of data mining technologies is summed up nicely in the last paragraph of an article I found at blogs.nytimes.com:

“…the technology raises all sorts of privacy questions. But this kind of targeted marketing is becoming the way of the Web, and Accenture wants to get into the game.”

I think developers understand precisely what the privacy concerns are, but until federal regulations stop them in their tracks, they’ll just continue doing it because it’s insanely lucrative.