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Thanks to the Internet, Collection, Organization, and Retrieval of Information is Quick and Efficient

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Companies in the past have had great difficulty in the collection, organization, and retrieval of information from consumers. Usually this data was organized manually, requiring services from different agencies to create a consumer profile. The process was complex, sluggish, and expensive for one to gather such material. However thanks to the Internet, and now powerful computers and targeting algorithms in association with large-scale databases, has simplified this process and enhanced its yield greatly in Ecommerce. The Internet offers numerous opportunities to collect this information about individuals, questioning the ethical values at hand and justifications on how this data is mined. The most common and well-known method of tracking …show more content…

Typically, spyware is found within freeware and stays on one’s hard drive where it continually tracks the user’s actions and routinely sends back information harvested. The gathered data is usually used for advertising and marketing purposes, but users still can’t control what data is collected. If one wishes to remove this, usually the software install must be uninstalled as well. The uses of some of these tracking methods are controversial, but tracking consumers’ activities without their consent is unethical and should be considered illegal. Tracking purchasing data from the shopping cart is used by a transaction log, but there are many more means of tracking one’s purchasing history. Smart cards, an electronic card with an embedded chip that enables predefined operations or manipulation of information on the card may be used to track a consumer’s purchasing habits. The programs and data must be downloaded from and activated by some other device since the chip isn’t a stand-alone computer, even though it does hold properties of running programs like a computer. There are two types of smart cards, one which is activated once inserted into a reader (contact card), and one which only has to be within a certain proximity of a reader to process a transaction (contactless proximity card). There are also Hybrid cards which combine both features into one. These cards are growing very rapidly and are often used in place

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