The benefits of Google and Facebook’s invasiveness

Face it, privacy on the Internet doesn’t exist. While there is no shortage of people willing to complain about this consequence of the digital revolution, there exists a minority of us who recognize it for some of its benefits.

Recently, Facebook has been pressured by the Federal Trade Commission about how it manages its users’ information. If you’re a Facebook user logged into your account, Facebook inserts what are commonly referred to as “cookies” into your browser.

One cookie, known as the session cookie, gathers the personal information that you give to the website and your preferences, as indicated by “likes.” 

Another cookie, known as the browser cookie, gathers information about your screen resolution, browser type and operating system. The same cookie also collects time and date information in connection to any URL that has a Facebook plug-in.

Many Facebook users, and the FTC, are concerned about the invasiveness of these cookies, but these users don’t understand that these cookies help make the user experience better.

Facebook gathers this information for a reason. The information allows it to combat abuses within the website associated with phishing scams and fake accounts.

It also gives Facebook information to prevent or limit the damage associated with viral weblinks, such as the ones responsible for infecting many accounts with porn and violent images just a few weeks ago.

While the browser cookie, as of now, is not used to help Facebook target ads, the session cookie is. Therefore, only the information you explicitly give Facebook is used to generate revenue.

Other companies, however, do utilize a user’s browsing history to help generate ads, even if the user doesn’t explicitly give them permission to. For instance, Google uses clickstream data to improve search results and help advertisers target ads to those who would be most interested in seeing them.

If you use Google as frequently as most people do, you should be thankful for this. Were it not for the information that you unwittingly provide Google every time you click on a link, Google would not be the powerful tool it is today, and you would most likely be spending much more time searching for relevant information on the Internet.

Likewise, without this information, advertisers, who pay for most of the websites we visit every day, might not be so willing to invest advertising dollars in the Internet.

Tracking data gives institutions like Google the ability to provide advertisers with the information necessary to assure, for instance, that a gay dating website does not advertise to straight users.

Data is powerful, and with the invention of the Internet, there is plenty of it. Many fear this development. But in reality, even before the Internet was a staple of our lives, we possessed no real privacy.

In 2008, I interviewed Fred Cate, an IU law professor and director of the IU Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research. Cate told me the Fourth Amendment, which protects our right against illegal search and seizure, has become outdated.

“Back in the 1970s, the Supreme Court held that the Fourth Amendment didn’t apply to data unless you possessed it yourself, so the court said if somebody else had it, then it must not be private, or else you wouldn’t have let someone else have it,” Cate said.

The way I interpret this in the digital age is to mean that visiting a website is akin to visiting a brick-and-mortar store. It’s a public act — you willingly give away your visit and your profile of information (your data), just as when you walk into a store you give away your physical characteristics and any other information that can be deduced from that.

Except in the case of the Internet, institutions, such as Google and Bing, can aggregate information from all the “stores” you visit to more accurately serve you. This is mutually beneficial. On the one hand, it saves businesses money by connecting them to potential customers. And on the other hand, it connects users with information that is relevant to our lives.

While there are certainly some aspects of this data boom to be worried about — such as where our credit card information goes and government tracking — data mining by Facebook and Google is not one of them.

­— nperrino@indiana.edu