Company websites track user’s behavior for important information like page views, time on site and bounce rates to help their business. But they also collect our cookie data that can give them a little more personal information that follows you from the different websites you visit. Is it ethical for companies to be able to access that information and track tour behavior?
As a consumer
You can log into google analytics and see what kind of information that is collected by the company and it can be really unsettling. People agree to letting company websites use their cookie data but sometimes they have no idea what agreeing to that means. That where I think it can become unethical because consumers don’t realize that they are agreeing to be “followed” even after they leave the site. In my opinion that violating your privacy.
As a company
They are trying to track the consumers behavior and market your brands or campaign to the consumers who would be interested. And it works well because it allowing the information they received from the cookie data to help create a target audience and reach out to the people who are interested in it.
At the end of the day it all depends on the company, if it’s a company you feel safe with having your information then yes, it can be ethical. If a company seem a little sketchy and doesn’t seem like the information they would be collecting would be useful and asking some extra personal questions then maybe it’s not so ethical. A way for companies to help make consumers feel this is a safe and ethical way for using consumer information could be explaining what the cookies are. Taking the time to have a little explanation for some of the users who may not exactly know how cookies work and how the information collected by the cookies are used to help the business and not really trying to track their online presence.