It is well-known that browsing the Internet often brings down unwelcome types of cookies onto a personal computer. However, one does not always think of this possibility when clicking onto politicians’ websites.
The Sydney Morning Herald reminds us:
Politicians are letting foreign-owned companies covertly gather information about voters.
The websites of Barry O'Farrell, Kristina Keneally, Tony Abbott and the Greens plant spying devices on visitors' computers, which can track them as they browse the internet.
Information gathered about a user's online behaviour can be used to build detailed profiles to help target advertisements - a practice many believe is a threat to privacy.
Online tracking is done mainly by cookies (text files) and beacons (invisible images)…….
The devices allow a third-party company to see which elements of a page the user has clicked on, potentially identifying information held in the URL, such as an email address.
A tracking device, owned by Yahoo! and dated to expire in 2037, was planted on this website's test computer when visiting the website of the federal Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott.
The site of the Premier, Kristina Keneally, placed devices owned by ShareThis, a company that collects information about online habits.
All four websites planted YouTube cookies, even though this website's computer did not play any videos.”……
The websites of Ms Keneally, Mr Abbott and the Greens also planted flash cookies which can hold more data than standard cookies. They also have no expiration date and are stored on an external server, which makes them difficult for users to detect or delete…….
The Australian Privacy Commissioner, Timothy Pilgrim, said aggregated data might enable identification of individuals.
Now at the time of writing the stated privacy policies of Tony Abbott, Kristina Keneally and Barry O’Farrell did not spell out the extent of information gathering they were allowing on their websites.
Perhaps it’s time they did – even if a loophole in the Commonwealth Privacy Act 1988 apparently allows the collection and compilation of digital and tracking data on the grounds that Members of Parliament, local government councillors and their respective contractors and sub-contractors (as well as political party volunteers) are exempt from this act’s provisions when participating in the political process.
Privacy protection is obviously a one-way street in this country and internet users are playing in the path of oncoming traffic.
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