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Authors: Bruce Schneier
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package deal that includes surveillance and don’t have any real choice in the matter.
This is the bargain I talked about in the Introduction.
This chapter is primarily about Internet surveillance, but remember that everything
is—or soon will be—connected to the Internet. Internet surveillance is really shorthand
for surveillance in an Internet-connected world.
INTERNET SURVEILLANCE
The primary goal of all this corporate Internet surveillance is advertising. There’s
a little market research and customer service in there, but those activities are secondary
to the goal of more effectively selling you things.
Internet surveillance is traditionally based on something called a cookie. The name
sounds benign, but the technical description “persistent identifier” is far more accurate.
Cookies weren’t intended to be surveillance devices; rather, they were designed to
make surfing the web easier. Websites don’t inherently remember you from visit to
visit or even from click to click. Cookies provide the solution to this problem. Each
cookie contains a unique number that allows the site to identify you. So now when
you click around on an Internet merchant’s site, you keep telling it, “I’m customer
#608431.” This allows the site to find your account, keep yourshopping cart attached to you, remember you the next time you visit, and so on.
Companies quickly realized that they could set their own cookies on pages belonging
to other sites—with their permission and by paying for the privilege—and the third-party
cookie was born. Enterprises like DoubleClick (purchased by Google in 2007) started
tracking web users across many different sites. This is when ads started following
you around the web. Research a particular car or vacation destination or medical condition,
and for weeks you’ll see ads for that car or city or a related pharmaceutical on every
commercial Internet site you visit.
This has evolved into a shockingly extensive, robust, and profitable surveillance
architecture. You are being tracked pretty much everywhere you go on the Internet,
by many companies and data brokers: ten different companies on one site, a dozen on
another. Facebook tracks you on every site with a Facebook Like button (whether you’re
logged in to Facebook or not), and Google tracks you on every site that has a Google
Plus +1 button or that simply uses Google Analytics to monitor its own web traffic.
Most of the companies tracking you have names you’ve never heard of: Rubicon Project,
AdSonar, Quantcast, Pulse 260, Undertone, Traffic Marketplace. If you want to see
who’s tracking you, install one of the browser plugins that let you monitor cookies.
I guarantee you will be startled. One reporter discovered that 105 different companies
tracked his Internet use during one 36-hour period. In 2010, a seemingly innocuous
site like Dictionary.com installed over 200 tracking cookies on your browser when
you visited.
It’s no different on your smartphone. The apps there track you as well. They track
your location, and sometimes download your address book, calendar, bookmarks, and
search history. In 2013, the rapper Jay-Z and Samsung teamed up to offer people who
downloaded an app the ability to hear the new Jay-Z album before release. The app
required the ability to view all accounts on the phone, track the phone’s location,
and track who the user was talking to on the phone. And the Angry Birds game even
collects location data when you’re not playing.
Broadband companies like Comcast also conduct surveillance on their users. These days
they’re mostly monitoring to see whether you illegally download copyrighted songs
and videos, but other applications aren’t far behind.Verizon, Microsoft, and others are working on a set-top box that can monitor what’s
going on in the room, and serve ads based on that information.
It’s less Big Brother, and
This is the bargain I talked about in the Introduction.
This chapter is primarily about Internet surveillance, but remember that everything
is—or soon will be—connected to the Internet. Internet surveillance is really shorthand
for surveillance in an Internet-connected world.
INTERNET SURVEILLANCE
The primary goal of all this corporate Internet surveillance is advertising. There’s
a little market research and customer service in there, but those activities are secondary
to the goal of more effectively selling you things.
Internet surveillance is traditionally based on something called a cookie. The name
sounds benign, but the technical description “persistent identifier” is far more accurate.
Cookies weren’t intended to be surveillance devices; rather, they were designed to
make surfing the web easier. Websites don’t inherently remember you from visit to
visit or even from click to click. Cookies provide the solution to this problem. Each
cookie contains a unique number that allows the site to identify you. So now when
you click around on an Internet merchant’s site, you keep telling it, “I’m customer
#608431.” This allows the site to find your account, keep yourshopping cart attached to you, remember you the next time you visit, and so on.
Companies quickly realized that they could set their own cookies on pages belonging
to other sites—with their permission and by paying for the privilege—and the third-party
cookie was born. Enterprises like DoubleClick (purchased by Google in 2007) started
tracking web users across many different sites. This is when ads started following
you around the web. Research a particular car or vacation destination or medical condition,
and for weeks you’ll see ads for that car or city or a related pharmaceutical on every
commercial Internet site you visit.
This has evolved into a shockingly extensive, robust, and profitable surveillance
architecture. You are being tracked pretty much everywhere you go on the Internet,
by many companies and data brokers: ten different companies on one site, a dozen on
another. Facebook tracks you on every site with a Facebook Like button (whether you’re
logged in to Facebook or not), and Google tracks you on every site that has a Google
Plus +1 button or that simply uses Google Analytics to monitor its own web traffic.
Most of the companies tracking you have names you’ve never heard of: Rubicon Project,
AdSonar, Quantcast, Pulse 260, Undertone, Traffic Marketplace. If you want to see
who’s tracking you, install one of the browser plugins that let you monitor cookies.
I guarantee you will be startled. One reporter discovered that 105 different companies
tracked his Internet use during one 36-hour period. In 2010, a seemingly innocuous
site like Dictionary.com installed over 200 tracking cookies on your browser when
you visited.
It’s no different on your smartphone. The apps there track you as well. They track
your location, and sometimes download your address book, calendar, bookmarks, and
search history. In 2013, the rapper Jay-Z and Samsung teamed up to offer people who
downloaded an app the ability to hear the new Jay-Z album before release. The app
required the ability to view all accounts on the phone, track the phone’s location,
and track who the user was talking to on the phone. And the Angry Birds game even
collects location data when you’re not playing.
Broadband companies like Comcast also conduct surveillance on their users. These days
they’re mostly monitoring to see whether you illegally download copyrighted songs
and videos, but other applications aren’t far behind.Verizon, Microsoft, and others are working on a set-top box that can monitor what’s
going on in the room, and serve ads based on that information.
It’s less Big Brother, and
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