"Anonymized" data really isn't—and here's why not.

"Anonymized" data really isn't—and here's why not.

-- Tom

 

In a world where our private information is bought and sold like laundry detergent, this article is a good reminder as to what we are giving up. People often ask how Google makes money with all of their free products. Simple: Google is nothing more than an advertising company that offers web services as a means to the eyeballs for the ads, and secondly, they are fast becoming the largest database of people and their habits, behaviors, etc. on the planet.

The selling of this "aggregate" (so-called anonymous) data is quickly getting out of hand. As the person in the article showed, there's no such thing. We hand over private information and big business just sees dollar signs and turn our private information into a commodity. Welcome to the 21st Century.

 

So how does one protect against this? Use an anonymizer? Monitor what cookies you allow? Anything else?