Source:
Even though internet users have expressed great
discomfort with being “tracked” online, both presidential candidates are
employing a variety of tools to do exactly that. These technologies enable them to create
profiles with people’s internet habits and thus target them with personalized ads. According to Ghostery, a
firm that monitors online tracking, BarackObama.com hosted 160 unique tracking
technologies and MittRomney.com had 110 unique tracking technologies. On neither websites is the trackingdisclosed on its
homepage, but instead only shown in the privacy policy section. The larger issue at hand is will these third
party companies providing this data collection service reuse this valuable data
for other purposes?
On an even more invasive note, with this information, the campaigns are sending targeted emails to site visitors. According to an analysis by email marketer StrongMail, a voter recently received an email from the Obama campaign embedded with names of three Facebook friends who live in North Carolina, urging her to encourage them to vote.
There are even further implications to this lack of digital privacy, given that US presidential campaigns have historically served as testing grounds for new advertising techniques. Consequently, they have had great influence in corporate marketing strategies worldwide.
No comments:
Post a Comment