The Online tracking category means, for example, click tracking performed by advertisers or companies that send you newsletters. Most people don't find this type of tracking questionable, they accept it as a fact of life on the web, because they understand that websites need to earn money or they will cease to exist, and tracking clicks is very necessary for this. Hence, the category is in the Neutral group, together with various other controversial categories.[/quote]
What you're explaining is online advertising
- Privacy Concerns
The collection of user information by publishers and advertisers has raised consumer concerns about their privacy. Sixty percent of Internet users would use Do Not Track technology to block all collection of information if given the opportunity. Over half of all Google and Facebook users are concerned about their privacy when using Google and Facebook, according to Gallup.
Many consumers have reservations about by online behavioral targeting. By tracking users' online activities, advertisers are able to understand consumers quite well. Advertisers often use technology, such as web bugs and respawning cookies, to maximizing their abilities to track consumers. According to a 2011 survey conducted by Harris Interactive, over half of Internet users had a negative impression of online behavioral advertising, and forty percent feared that their personally-identifiable information had been shared with advertisers without their consent. Consumers can be especially troubled by advertisers targeting them based on sensitive information, such as financial or health status.- Privacy and Modern Advertising: Most US Internet Users Want 'Do Not Track' to Stop Collection of Data about their Online Activities - read the paper
- Two-Thirds of Americans Object to Online Tracking - NY Times article
- Trustworthiness of advertisers
Scammers can take advantage of consumers' difficulties verifying an online persona's identity, leading to artifices like phishing (where scam emails look identical to those from a well-known brand owner) and confidence schemes like the Nigerian "419" scam. The Internet Crime Complaint Center received 289,874 complaints in 2012, totaling over half a billion dollars in losses, most of which originated with scam ads.
Consumers also face malware risks when interacting with online advertising. Cisco's 2013 Annual Security Report revealed that clicking on ads was 182 times more likely to install a virus on a user's computer than surfing the Internet for porn.
Curious, since categories have not been placed in multiple groups, how was this test performed?According to our tests, this is also the best group to get people to vote for these categories