How to Prevent Your Internet Moves From Being Tracked

Retailers are trying to track your information online just as they're trying to track your information in the store

By: WSPA Staff | News Channel 7
Published: November 05, 2009

What websites have you visited lately? Have you shopped online… checked airfare prices… how about researched a medical condition?

Even if you don't remember, marketers tracking your internet habits do.

Heidi Harner Morrill owns an internet marketing company in Greenville called Morrill Technologies Group.

“Retailers are trying to track your information online just as they're trying to track your information in the store,” said Morrill.

Morrill says the more you know about online tracking, the more creepy it becomes.
So much for sites like Google that track where you click, now third party companies are coming in, collecting your online habits, combining that with public offline records and selling that information to hungry retailers.

Ron Romine, a board member with the American Civil Liberties Union in Spartanburg says “it is a slippery slope."

“This incredible storehouse of data reduces us to almost a kind of servitude where we give up our individual privacy," he says.

Morrill says we can arm ourselves through our computer settings:

- Go to tools. Click internet options. Then security tab and set your level to medium.

- Then in the privacy tab, turn on the pop-up blocker

- Last Morrill recommends allowing what's called first party cookies, but clicking prompt or block for third party cookies

“They are not cookies that are set by website owners they're set by advertisers, so they're the ones that are tracking your habits across multiple websites from site to site," said Morrill.

Of course, not all tracking is bad. It allows online retailers to alert you about sales and coupons that may come in handy as the holiday season approaches.