How Do Sites “Follow” You?

http://finance.yahoo.com/family-home/article/112769/like-button-follows-users-wsj

In an article provided by The Wall Street Journal, it stated that some social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter as well as Google use widgets to “follow” you, or see what sites you’ve visited online. In the study from the article it said that Facebook would be able to do this through it’s “like” button and that Twitter does through various tweets. What happens is when a person logs on a social media site, and are browsing the internet, even if the person does not press the “like” button to share their information with their  friends, the media site are still able to collect that information and find out what you’ve been viewing. Apparently, it is able to collect all this information as long as you are logged on to their sites. Even if you shut down your computer, the site is still collecting data. It does not stop until you log off that particular site.

The article went on about how the sites are taking all this information without people really even knowing that it is being taken. In the article it said “our reading habits online encompass everything we’re thinking about, political and religious views, health and relationship problems…do you want to have an invisible person peering over your shoulder as you walk through the library?” Even with this article informing it’s readers about what’s going on, what I found really interesting about this article were some of the responses the readers had to the article. While some people said that in doing this, sites were ”invading people’s privacy” others talked about how even with knowing all this, it just didn’t bother them.  While some people considered this a situation that even George Orwell could not imagine with the “Big Brother” state, others claimed that either they did not feel information being leaked out about them to others was that important or that these kinds of things are just something people have to get use to in this age.

I guess its all just a matter of a person’s personal preference. How much would it bother a particular person that their information and what they are privately doing or looking up ends up in the hands of some company. For some, not so much, the feeling that I’m not that important compared to the other millions or for others it’s a matter of knowing that someone is prying onto your life, without you knowing or without your permission.