You may not realize it but you're being watched and monitored every day while on the web. Whether it's government, business, or criminals, monitoring web activity is a multi-billion dollar business.
Should you be worried?
Well, that depends on how much you value your privacy. To some, this tracking is actually a good thing-- it makes surfing the web easier because passwords are remembered which saves users lots of time.
But the fact is, that everyplace you go, you leave an electronic trail. There is always someone watching that trail and noting what you're doing.
"The truth is that privacy on the internet is virtually non-existent now," said David Fewer, director of the Ottawa Internet Privacy and Policy Clinic.
His statement is echoed by Peter Eckersly from the Electronic Frontier Foundations in the U.S.
"It is very unusual now to find websites that don't have this kind of third party tracking embedded in them," said Eckersly.
And sometimes the tracking can even be international, like in the case of Rick Glynn.
Glynn spent the last 20 years working with the federal government in technology. He's upset with Bell after determining that his email is being stored in Microsoft systems in the United States. That means the U.S. government can read his email under the terms of the Patriot Act. Big brother is watching and Glynn was given no choice.
"If someone says to you that we are going to change where we store your information and asking, 'Do you want to keep your Blackberry?' is different than some day there is a knock on your door and someone says, 'We were just reading your email last night,'" said Glynn.
The data being collected about you is gathered using cookies, zombies, web beacons, and complex online agreements that we never read but, in which, we sign away our rights. There are software keylogger programs to secretly record what someone does on their computer or track what they do on their cellphones.
In the past year or so this has become more of an issue, especially because of Facebook and the way it handles what many believe to be private information.
"In Canada, we are just beginning to come to grips with this issue," said Fewer. "I think it's a real big problem whenever the extent of the problem is not fully known and we just don't know about this problem and I think that is where we are right now. "
Fewer lodged a complaint about Facebook. It brought the federal Privacy Commissioner into the case and focused attention on the subject.
Colin McKay, head of education at the Privacy Commission, said that people should be aware that what they're sharing online is public.
"If you make a decision to consciously share information online for example maybe in a discussion group about a medical condition you have be aware of what may happen to that information you are sharing," he said.
Eckersly said that users' "jaws would drop" if they knew how much they were being watched while online.
Some are happy with the tracking though. For example, 80 per cent of the ads you see while online are there because a users' electronic profils tells advertisers what that user is interested in. The ad industry says all this tracking makes your online experience a better one and its good for business.
