The Battle for Your Data on the Web: Boston start-up joins those that will try to help you keep personal data off the Web
Joseph White was on a mission: to wipe himself off the Web.
Because his job as a federal government employee requires a low profile, the 37-year-old Quincy resident did not want his address or information about his family showing up on Google. “What aggravates me,” White said, “is that any Tom, Dick, or Harry who looks can find this information out about you.”
It’s not easy to remain anonymous when so much of what we do on the Web — searching, shopping, banking, photo-sharing — generates personalized information that is mined by or sold to online advertisers and technology companies. So White got some professional help.
He hired Abine Inc., a Boston start-up and one of a crop of online privacy companies, including PrivacyChoice and Reputation.com Inc., that promise to help people control their personal information on the Internet.
And there’s a ton of that information online. Many websites download small tracking files called cookies to the computers of people who click on their pages. Cookies record and transmit anonymous information about those users; for example, that’s how online retailer Amazon.com knows what books to recommend when you revisit the site, or how Google.com chooses which ads to show particular users when they search its site.
User data are also stored and sold by many websites to marketing agencies and online advertisers, or to companies known as data brokers. Those brokers collect and analyze personal data on huge numbers of users, selling it to a wide range of customers, from law enforcement agencies to insurers
In combination with personal information from offline sources — legal records such as criminal convictions, for example, or mortgage loans and other financial records — such information can be used to compile a virtual ‘dossier about a person that is all encompassing,’ said Paul Stephens, director of policy and advocacy for Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, a San Diego, Calif., nonprofit group.