What kinds of information can websites gather about their visitors?
The amount of outsider observation that can happen in the online world is much greater and more dangerous than in the real world. For example, in a physical bookstore, the store can only gather a list of what books you purchase (assuming you don’t pay cash). In the online world, bookstores can gather all purchases, your home address, credit card numbers, all the books you merely browsed, and the amount of time you spent browsing each book. It is like being followed around the store with a camera over your shoulder. In addition, Web Analytic tools make it possible for any Web administrator to identify specific IP addresses, domain names, and geographic locations of visitors in order to collect visitor activity. With just this simple tool, they can analyze individual surfing behaviors, track the pages within the site that are most frequently accessed, and identify downloaded files, etc. It is this aspect of functionality that can, in turn, be used to build a detailed psychographic profil
