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Every Move You Make…
Advertisers are tracking your online behaviour
Everything you do online is recorded in some way. And some of this information is increasingly being gathered and used for commercial purposes. Data has become big business.
When you use a computer or a mobile device to go online, your online activities can be observed and tracked by advertising networks to determine certain personal characteristics, preferences and web browsing history. In a practice known as behavioural advertising, the information gleaned from such practices is then used to deliver advertising that is targeted to your inferred interests.
Advertisers use various tracking technologies, such as HTTP cookies, Flash cookies, web beacons and deep packet inspection technology, to collect your online user data. Each of these data-collection methods typically remains invisible to you.
The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada has prepared this fact sheet and some Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) on behavioural advertising to explain what it is, the privacy challenges it raises and what you can do about it.
