Online privacy concerns growing

There's a privacy arms race under way online, a continuing struggle among consumers, Internet companies, advocates and policymakers to assert greater control over personal data.

Following recent NSA spying regulations, many people disabled browser cookies or took other steps to protect their privacy. Cookies are still popular with online advertisers, but they have been developing and using more refined methods for some time, including authenticated tracking, browser fingerprinting, cross-device tracking and more.

"Google knows exactly who you are because there is so much authentication built into Google's services," Chris Hoofnagle, director of the information privacy programs at the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology, said in an e-mail. "We are moving to an authenticated Web where one is always signed in, and that authentication, even if on the surface (it's) pseudonymous, typically indicates the user's identity."

See full article at SFGATE.

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