Online businesses have to keep track of their prospective customers as it reveals the intent and the interests of their target audience. Web tracking offers a lot of advantages. Tracking the traffic that your website receives can help you make additions or changes to the website content to bring in more visitors for your target keywords, and to meet them with better landing pages. Information gathered through web tracking can be used to offer feedback to the users and also identify the users’ specific needs.
On the flip side there is an inherent danger of web tracking technology being used excessively by businesses in their inherent quest to get more inside information about their clients. This can lead to reasonable concerns from customers and the press about privacy. The biggest example of such a questionable use is Google. It received a lot of critique for collecting massive amounts of customer information, both online and during its Street View campaign. Another company, Facebook, was widely criticized recently concerning the overuse of web tracking technology in their “Like” buttons that made their way to various websites all over the Internet.
History is rife with examples of misuse of the best of technology, even when it has been created for the progress of humanity. Web technology is perhaps one of the most misused and abused ones, with all the spam and excessive advertising. And possibly one of the most misused tools of web technology is web tracking. However, technology works both ways. If there are web tracking tools available, there are also resources available to prevent their misuse.
You can prevent unwanted spying on your online activity by using spyware scanners and script blocking plug-ins. You can use proxies to browse the internet to shrug off some IP address tracking techniques. You can use a CGI, PHP or any anonymous proxy for that purpose. Sometimes clicking on an ad that is not Google Adsense is a sure invitation for spyware and viruses. Think before you click.
Tracking is inevitable and indispensable in today’s online situation to remain competitive. But if you are a website owner, you must remember to stay within ethically accepted realms of operation. Data obtained must be used judiciously. A clear privacy policy displayed on your website will help you gain the trust of your customers.
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