by: Makalah Sizer
Imagine your shopping on a new online website, and the first thing that pops up is is to accept or deny something called cookies. But not a warm sweet treat to enjoy, but a data program to collect your information. The question is, should you do it or not, and if you do what happens?
What does Tracking Behavior mean?
Every website that you have frequently visited, or even purchased from has tracked a portion of your information. However, they couldn’t have done it without you. Websites have to ask your permission to record your information.
In order to collect your information, a website owner has to install a web analytics program to its website, like Google Analytics, for example. Then the magic begins.
Analytics doesn’t exactly take down the name and address of its users. It’s identified from a person’s unique computer or device, through cookies.
Cookies and how it works
Cookies is a packet of data that a computer receives. It helps keep track of consumer activity on the site and track their activity.
Cookies are also really useful because they can store your personal information, like your login or credit card history. However, should people allow cookies to do this?
Most times everyone says yes, it’s really helpful and it can help the consumer save time, but consumers often fear that they are then tracking all of their information. That being said, is it ethical?
Ethical or Unethical?
I think that under most circumstances tracking user behavior is ethical. It’s when they start sharing your information with third parties when they cross that line.
It’s partially up to the consumer to even allow for companies to take their information, so it’s a shared responsibility. Users also have the ability at any time to delete cookies from their web browser. So taking these factors into consideration, I would say that it is ethical under normal circumstances to track user behavior.