ProPublica's Julia Angwin reported this week on how marketers' tracking of customers is getting more intrusive: "Online marketers are increasingly seeking to track users offline, as well, by collecting data about people's offline habits—such as recent purchases, where you live, how many kids you have, and what kind of car you drive."
Angwin goes on to explain how it works: after sharing your e-mail address with a store, a marketer locates customers online when they use their email addresses to log into websites, then a marketer tags customers' computers with a tracker, and then when customers arrive at the website of the same story they will see a site customized to them.
Lawyer and Legal Journalist
