Data Privacy and Tracking

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Data Privacy and Tracking Definition

Data Tracking in the Government and Avoidance

Rights/Laws Between Countries
The 1st Amendment protects the rights free speech of American citizens and the 4th Amendment protects from unlawful search and seizures. The Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 abbreviated  as ECPA protects citizens from unauthorized government   of personal electronic communication

In Europe, privacy of personal information is taken more serious than in America with the Directive 95/46/EC (commonly called the Data Protection Directive)  and Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

These laws help protect individual rights to one's sensitive data. This maybe the case but this doesn't change the fact that the internet is not the safest place.
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Trackers and Cookies
Technology has allowed many conveniences and simplifying  lifestyles. The internet is used to allow

computers make complicated tasks easy and safe, such as storing personal files, bank transactions, pictures, and etc.. However, your insurance isn't guaranteed   when it comes to other areas around the internet. Companies have trackers on many websites collecting information to sell back at the user. For example, when a user looks up shoes on a website with third-party trackers or cookies, the tracker will know the style of shoes that the user is trying to buy. If the company also have advertisements on the website too, or sell the information to other companies. The user will see advertisements for similar shoes. To still use the example, if personal buyer information is entered on the website, i.e. age, the trackers can pick that information up. Thus, more advertisements will be made based on your age and the shoes you like.

In recent years, research by the Wallstreet Journal[1] has discovered that kid websites were more riddled with third-party trackers than other adult orientated   websites. In fact, the top 15 kid orientented sites had more trackers than the top 50 adult oriented websites.

Due to the privacy laws in Europe, the law makers try to require web cookies to prevent privacy being violated. Companies that focus on researching over the internet (i.e. Gartner) don't earn much profit in Europe than in the Americas.[2]

Trackers tends to only be website specific when it comes to tracking users on the internet, meaning a user should not be tracked when they search on a different domain by the same tracker. The trackers vary accordingly to privacy policies of the site or the company that's tracking the users. A major case was made in 2011, Facebook was being investigated on their tracking and privacy policy.[3]


 * Article about Anonymity
 * Article on reducing information tracking