In 1993, the dawn of the Web age, the liberating anonymity of the online world was captured in a well-known New Yorker cartoon. One dog, sitting at a computer, tells another: “On the Web, nobody knows you’re a dog.” Fifteen years later, that anonymity is gone.

It’s not paranoia: they really are spying on you.

Technology companies have towering used “cookies,” little bits of tracking software slipped onto your computer, and other means, to record the Web sites you visit, the ads you go on, even the words you enter in search engines — knowledge that some hold onto forever.

They’re not telling you they’re doing it, and they’re not asking permission. Web service providers, or ISPs, are now getting into the act.

considering they control your connection, they can keep track of everything you do online, and there have been reports that ISPs may have started to sell the info they gather.

The driving force behind

that prying is commerce. The big growth area in online advertising right now is “behavioral targeting.” Web sites can charge a premium whether they are able to tell the maker of an expensive sports car that its ads will seem on Web pages clicked on by upper-income, middle-aged men.

The knowledge, however, gets a lot more specific than age and gender — and more sensitive. Tech companies can keep track of when a specific Web user looks up Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, visits adult Web sites, buys cancer drugs online or participates in anti-government discussion groups.

Serving up ads based on behavioral targeting can itself be an invasion of privacy, particularly when the info used is personal.

(”Hmm. . . . I wonder why I always get those drug-rehab ads when I surf the World Wide Web on Jane’s laptop?”)

The bigger issue is the digital dossiers that tech companies can compile….

Orginal post by Top Tech News