Econometa

In my last two posts, I kept coming back to questions concerning personal data: is it anonymous, who has control over it, and how is it used. The cable company knows who you are, so if they’re going to track your viewing preferences it has to stay local so that it stays anonymous (see here). [...]

Walt Mossberg’s WSJ column on Thursday posits that tracking cookies are spyware, according to his definition of the term:

Computer code placed on a user’s computer without his or her permission and without notification, or with notification so obscure it hardly merits the term. Once installed, spyware and adware alter the PC’s behavior to suit [...]