Why are users tracked? [closed]

Question

I'm trying to get a well-informed and full picture of why one as a single person should worry about being tracked across sites and uniquely identified. The reasons I can think of are:

1. Serving ads as tailored to the user as possible (and thus likely to end in a purchase).
2. Governments who want to crack down on individuals they consider to do unwanted activity.

Are there other major reasons one would want to worry about tracking?

Part of the reason for asking is that it seems now near impossible to avoid being tracked even for true experts, so one wants to know the damage one inevitably faces with the current state of things.

Answer 1

Users are tracked because the collected information can be sold.

A major reason why data is collected from users is due to the simple fact that people will pay for the data. There are many companies that broker collected data, such as Intellius, to virtually anyone with a deep enough pocket. What buyers do with this personal information, however, is up to the buyers. Many use it to serve ads. Others use it to learn more about their target demographic. Still others may use it for private investigation, or in flesh search engines. And, of course, governments use it for surveillance.

Answer 2

The simple yet complicated answer is Because of data.

In addition to what schroeder said (tracking users for a commercial optimization,profiling and targeted marketing...), by profiling you, a company can anticipate your needs and actions.

Today we hear that by allowing a company to track you, it helps in “personalizing” your browsing experience :) meaning that two users browsing the same website won’t see the same content. This point is quite interesting especially when it comes to social networks or medias, depending on their profiles, two users will be served different articles or different versions of the same article to convey a given message more effectively.See following article for example: How Covert Agents Infiltrate the Internet to Manipulate, Deceive, and destroy the reputations

Sometimes, tracking users helps to get enough statistics to improve product's - website - functionalities and performances, by tracking users companies gain insights into how their products are being used and above all (hopefully) pimping them to meet each user's requirements.

Answer 3

I would re-focus your conclusion about ads to be more generic, and bring the question more closely aligned with security/privacy. Users are tracked across a single website, across multiple websites, and other places to gather data with which to make decisions about that one user or for all similar users. The "making decisions" part is one of the big issues that GDPR is meant to address.

One of those decisions is to enable efficient targetting of ads so that advertisers do not waste money on ads displayed to the wrong people. As the phrase goes, "to display the right solution to your problem at the right time".

But the data can be used to profile what features users use or do not use, or what sites users like to visit in combination to know which sites should be partnering.

The more data that is collected, and the more profiling is done, the more the sites can provide personalisation and thereby be more attractive services to individuals instead of making guesses across a large population.

The downside is that a lot of information about people can be inferred, even things that people would not expect could be inferred simply by visiting a website.

Answer 4

Because it may have an advantage and an advantage gets you clients and clients pay money.

Assume you're an advertising company and try to sell a big website ads. Another company is doing the same, but telling them they tailor the ads using tracking. You better start tracking, if you want to sell something. This does not mean either of you have an advantage though tracking, but you probably are still better off if you do so.

The next is tracking without ads. This can make you money, because the advertiser buys information from you, so he can tell the big websites, that his tracking is better.

There is a whole market of tracking. Twitter lets advertisers target users by income. Does Twitter know your income? Do you think they infer it from a few short messages in your stream? No. They give your e-mail and phone number to other companies and buy information. And maybe some payment provide sold your income information to these companies, so Twitter can tie your pseudonym to an income.

When you run a website and someone offers you to include their tracker to get some money, you may sell your users to them. And if you are running an ad network, you may make a deal with a tracking company to get some additional money and information.

Answer 5

One reason to track people across sites is to follow the trail of what sites led to a successful purchase. People do research on purchases, and the sites they browsed to may have been important in making the final decision to buy.

These intermediate sites might be profitable places to advertise. More nefariously, these sites might be good places to spam with phony reviews or comments. That means a site that you relied on to provide honest reviews might not stay trustworthy for long.