Big Data Age cookie is a double-edged sword

CCTV 3 15 party exposed "NetEase steal user information mailbox put spam ads." According to CCTV reports, even if you do not stay at home, there are others, you are on the Internet and everything, in this mystery tracker under the peep. And this tracker, is each grasps the user the browsing record, the IP address, the password and so on information's internet company, even NetEase, also through this means steals the customer the information, in order to be effective in the customer mailbox to put the advertisement.

However, in the eyes of many industry, cookies are a double-edged sword on the one hand, internet companies use it to better serve users, on the other hand, cookies can become a tool for some advertising marketing companies to make money.

Current status collection Cookie Internet station all recruit

According to CCTV reports, some Internet companies secretly track users, such as through their own users to trace the analysis, and even the user's very private message content. With the user details obtained by various means, internet companies can advertise more accurately.

NetEase response said, NetEase mailbox processing about 200 million mails a day, there is no individual involved in prying into the possibility of user privacy. And some departments do not exist, and will not tolerate the collection of user privacy for commercial purposes of the Act. NetEase said that the sales department will be standardized to avoid exaggerated publicity, misleading.

But CCTV reports, a number of people spit trough said, their own Sina mailbox, Yahoo Mail, etc., also often received some strange spam, these messages are usually ads, sites recommend links, and so on, Yahoo Mail is often a number of links to foreign websites recommended.

Reporter survey found that the collection of cookie information is the Internet industry's common practice, not only NetEase mailbox, almost all Internet stations will collect the user's cookie information.

Paparazzi enterprise denies marketing cookies need to be popularized

What is a cookie? It is likened to the user's network ID. In general, cookies on a user's computer are read only by the Web site where it is placed. But for advertising marketing companies, cookies can accurately analyze the user's preferences and behavior characteristics.

CCTV disclosed that these companies through the analysis of user information, and then sold advertisers to carry out advertising marketing to profit. Product Friends Interactive claim to be able to capture 570 million cookies on the Internet, the national 90% of users in the master, including the user's gender, age, identity, education level and mail registration information.

Such companies are not the only one, including Easy media, Ivy Yi, and other companies are using cookies to track users. Among them, Ivy Yi claimed to have 500 million Internet users cookie data, Chuan Yang claims to have 900 million cookies, easy media is claimed to have more than 300 million Internet user cookie data; As with product friends, these companies get user cookies, basically by adding code to other sites.

For CCTV's exposure, Kosching, president of the company, said that cookies are a global browser-supported user identification information, anonymous information, does not involve any user personal accounts, contact details, such as privacy, the cookie data only for their own ads to improve the Internet experience, " Cookie analysis is the basis of global precision marketing company and Advertising network operation, is the effective means of marketing experience and effect promotion.

Yi Media said that the neglect of the popularity of netizens, the next need to strengthen the publicity. Its official microblog has released a series of tweets with "cookies and big data", such as "What the Cookie can do in internet ads," and "What is a flash Cookie". Several other companies such as the official microblogging, friends, etc., the most important content of these days is the popularity of cookie-related knowledge.

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Master Cookies

Profiling user Behavior only

For Web sites that steal user information by mastering user cookies, Li Zhongcun, a leading Internet analyst, says that recording cookies is a common practice for all websites to better serve users.

According to CCTV, Microsoft is the Internet company with the largest number of data. "Li Zhongcun said, the general website does not take the initiative to analyze the user's cookie value," such as my library has hundreds of millions of cookies, but I will not go to see which is you so-and-so, what you have done. ”

In fact, Li Zhongcun says, the cookies that these sites have are virtually useless for most people, and the average person can't read any useful information, and virtually every cookie on the site is encrypted.

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How to protect privacy in the big data age

For this time the Internet to steal user privacy, there are insiders believe that in the big data era, this will be the Internet industry is an urgent need to solve the important issue.

Reporters read the data found that the birthplace of online advertising in the United States, the topic of cookies has risen to the social ethics level, some conservative groups and NGOs have so many times to the United States Congress. In their view, when an advertisement is accurate enough, advertising is no longer an advertisement, but an important message. So precision means more information disclosure.

The reporters noted that the Giants, including Microsoft, Apple and Firefox, had already supported anonymous browsing around 2008, making the founder of the network data analysis, Eric Petersen, write an open letter to President Obama, highlighting the value of cookies.

"Cookies are more than 20 years old, and it's the cornerstone of the Internet," said Liu Dalong, an analyst at Eric Consulting. Especially in the big data and mobile internet age, the value of cookies is to make the site more in-depth and systematic understanding of users, so that precision marketing and personalized recommendation is possible. Only in this way, advertisers can better reduce the risk, uncertainty and marketing cost in the process of advertising, and obtain measurable communication effect and good marketing effect. On the other hand, personalized recommendations can also enable consumers to quickly find the information they need. ”

Industry insiders believe that, in contrast to the United States, the domestic environment is not optimistic, because 90% of the world's mail clients in China, which makes the Internet industry indeed there is the phenomenon of personal information stolen. One of the simplest examples is when you log in to a website that sends this information to your friends. In this respect, Zeng Kai-Fu Lee, an innovative workshop that worked at Google, suggested: "First, inform users that the information is used; ”