An Accidental Marketer

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Every time you “like” a friend’s Facebook status, sign up for a Nordstrom credit card, rate a Netflix movie, order a magazine subscription, or merely click on a website, you’re leaving behind a trail of data exhaust that up until recently has been like so many discarded Styrofoam cups lying along the information superhighway. The rise of microtargeting is a function of new logarithms—and computers fast enough to process them—that are able to capture all this trash and turn it into gold. Over the years, the data-mining industry has become adept at recycling information about the websites we visit and the products we buy. Rumor has it that some high-end companies, including Omaha Steaks, can now make more money by selling their customer pedigrees to data-mining firms than they can from selling their product.

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Encouraging civility while preserving avenues of dissent is a tough balancing act, and the core debate over whether one should have a right to anonymity in public spaces is long overdue. However, it comes with a danger — namely, that legitimate arguments for disclosure will be expanded to justify illegitimate spying on private interactions.