Privacy-invasive software
Encyclopedia
Privacy
-invasive software is a category of computer software
that ignores user
s’ privacy and that is distributed with a specific intent, often of a commercial
nature. Three typical examples of privacy-invasive software are adware
, spyware
and content hijacking programs.
threats to consider. Threats vary from the systematic capture of everyday events (e.g., what online sites that are visited or what items that are purchased from online stores) to the mass marketing
based on the retrieval of personal information (spam
offers and telemarketing
calls are more common than ever) to the distribution of information on lethal technologies used for, e.g., acts of terror
.
Today, software-based privacy-invasions occur in numerous aspects of Internet usage. Spyware
programs set to collect and distribute user information secretly download and execute on users’ workstations. Adware
displays advertisements
and other commercial content often based upon personal information retrieved by spyware
programs. System monitors record various actions on computer systems. Keyloggers record users’ keystrokes in order to monitor user behavior. Self-replicating malware downloads and spreads disorder in systems and networks. Data-harvesting software programmed to gather e-mail
addresses have become conventional features of the Internet, which among other things results in that spam e-mail messages fill networks and computers with unsolicited commercial content. With those threats in mind, we hereby define privacy-invasive software as:
In this context, ignoring users’ right to be left alone means that the software is unsolicited and that it does not permit users to determine for themselves when, how and to what extent personally identifiable data is gathered, stored or processed by the software. Distributed means that it has entered the computer systems of users from (often unknown) server
s placed on the Internet
infrastructure. Often of a commercial nature means that the software (regardless of type or quality) is used as a tool in some sort of a commercial plan to gain revenues.
after realizing software that stole his personal information had been installed on his computer . His definition reads as follows:
This definition was valid in the beginning of the spyware evolution. However, as the spyware concept evolved over the years it attracted new kinds of behaviours. As these behaviours grew both in number and in diversity, the term spyware became hollowed out. This evolution resulted in that a great number of synonyms sprang up, e.g. thiefware, scumware, trackware, and badware
. We believe that the lack of a single standard definition of spyware depends on the diversity in all these different views on what really should be included, or as Aaron Weiss put it :
Despite this vague comprehension of the essence in spyware, all descriptions include two central aspects. The degree of associated user consent
, and the level of negative impact they impair on the user and their computer system (further discussed in Section 2.3 and Section 2.5 in ). Because of the diffuse understanding in the spyware concept, recent attempts to define it have been forced into compromises. The Anti-Spyware Coalition
(ASC) which is constituted by public interest groups, trade associations, and anti-spyware companies, have come to the conclusion that the term spyware should be used at two different abstraction levels . At the low level they use the following definition, which is similar to Steve Gibson’s original one:
However, since this definition does not capture all the different types of spyware available they also provide a wider definition, which is more abstract in its appearance:
Privacy
Privacy is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves and thereby reveal themselves selectively...
-invasive software is a category of computer software
Computer software
Computer software, or just software, is a collection of computer programs and related data that provide the instructions for telling a computer what to do and how to do it....
that ignores user
User (computing)
A user is an agent, either a human agent or software agent, who uses a computer or network service. A user often has a user account and is identified by a username , screen name , nickname , or handle, which is derived from the identical Citizen's Band radio term.Users are...
s’ privacy and that is distributed with a specific intent, often of a commercial
Commerce
While business refers to the value-creating activities of an organization for profit, commerce means the whole system of an economy that constitutes an environment for business. The system includes legal, economic, political, social, cultural, and technological systems that are in operation in any...
nature. Three typical examples of privacy-invasive software are adware
Adware
Adware, or advertising-supported software, is any software package which automatically plays, displays, or downloads advertisements to a computer. These advertisements can be in the form of a pop-up. They may also be in the user interface of the software or on a screen presented to the user during...
, spyware
Spyware
Spyware is a type of malware that can be installed on computers, and which collects small pieces of information about users without their knowledge. The presence of spyware is typically hidden from the user, and can be difficult to detect. Typically, spyware is secretly installed on the user's...
and content hijacking programs.
Background
In a computerized setting, such as the Internet, there is a wide variety of privacyData privacy
Information privacy, or data privacy is the relationship between collection and dissemination of data, technology, the public expectation of privacy, and the legal and political issues surrounding them....
threats to consider. Threats vary from the systematic capture of everyday events (e.g., what online sites that are visited or what items that are purchased from online stores) to the mass marketing
Mass marketing
Mass marketing is a market coverage strategy in which a firm decides to ignore market segment differences and go after the whole market with one offer. It is type of marketing of a product to a wide audience. The idea is to broadcast a message that will reach the largest number of people possible...
based on the retrieval of personal information (spam
Spam (electronic)
Spam is the use of electronic messaging systems to send unsolicited bulk messages indiscriminately...
offers and telemarketing
Telemarketing
Telemarketing is a method of direct marketing in which a salesperson solicits prospective customers to buy products or services, either over the phone or through a subsequent face to face or Web conferencing appointment scheduled during the call.Telemarketing can also include recorded sales pitches...
calls are more common than ever) to the distribution of information on lethal technologies used for, e.g., acts of terror
Terrorism
Terrorism is the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion. In the international community, however, terrorism has no universally agreed, legally binding, criminal law definition...
.
Today, software-based privacy-invasions occur in numerous aspects of Internet usage. Spyware
Spyware
Spyware is a type of malware that can be installed on computers, and which collects small pieces of information about users without their knowledge. The presence of spyware is typically hidden from the user, and can be difficult to detect. Typically, spyware is secretly installed on the user's...
programs set to collect and distribute user information secretly download and execute on users’ workstations. Adware
Adware
Adware, or advertising-supported software, is any software package which automatically plays, displays, or downloads advertisements to a computer. These advertisements can be in the form of a pop-up. They may also be in the user interface of the software or on a screen presented to the user during...
displays advertisements
Advertising
Advertising is a form of communication used to persuade an audience to take some action with respect to products, ideas, or services. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering, although political and ideological advertising is also common...
and other commercial content often based upon personal information retrieved by spyware
Spyware
Spyware is a type of malware that can be installed on computers, and which collects small pieces of information about users without their knowledge. The presence of spyware is typically hidden from the user, and can be difficult to detect. Typically, spyware is secretly installed on the user's...
programs. System monitors record various actions on computer systems. Keyloggers record users’ keystrokes in order to monitor user behavior. Self-replicating malware downloads and spreads disorder in systems and networks. Data-harvesting software programmed to gather e-mail
E-mail
Electronic mail, commonly known as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems required that the author and the recipient both be online at the...
addresses have become conventional features of the Internet, which among other things results in that spam e-mail messages fill networks and computers with unsolicited commercial content. With those threats in mind, we hereby define privacy-invasive software as:
Definition
In this context, ignoring users’ right to be left alone means that the software is unsolicited and that it does not permit users to determine for themselves when, how and to what extent personally identifiable data is gathered, stored or processed by the software. Distributed means that it has entered the computer systems of users from (often unknown) server
Server (computing)
In the context of client-server architecture, a server is a computer program running to serve the requests of other programs, the "clients". Thus, the "server" performs some computational task on behalf of "clients"...
s placed on the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
infrastructure. Often of a commercial nature means that the software (regardless of type or quality) is used as a tool in some sort of a commercial plan to gain revenues.
Problem with the spyware concept
In early 2000, Steve Gibson formulated the first description of spywareSpyware
Spyware is a type of malware that can be installed on computers, and which collects small pieces of information about users without their knowledge. The presence of spyware is typically hidden from the user, and can be difficult to detect. Typically, spyware is secretly installed on the user's...
after realizing software that stole his personal information had been installed on his computer . His definition reads as follows:
This definition was valid in the beginning of the spyware evolution. However, as the spyware concept evolved over the years it attracted new kinds of behaviours. As these behaviours grew both in number and in diversity, the term spyware became hollowed out. This evolution resulted in that a great number of synonyms sprang up, e.g. thiefware, scumware, trackware, and badware
Stopbadware
StopBadware is a consumer-oriented nonprofit organization aimed at fighting malicious software, or "badware". It is the successor to StopBadware.org, a project started in 2006 at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. It spun off to become a standalone organization, and...
. We believe that the lack of a single standard definition of spyware depends on the diversity in all these different views on what really should be included, or as Aaron Weiss put it :
Despite this vague comprehension of the essence in spyware, all descriptions include two central aspects. The degree of associated user consent
Consent
Consent refers to the provision of approval or agreement, particularly and especially after thoughtful consideration.- Types of consent :*Implied consent is a controversial form of consent which is not expressly granted by a person, but rather inferred from a person's actions and the facts and...
, and the level of negative impact they impair on the user and their computer system (further discussed in Section 2.3 and Section 2.5 in ). Because of the diffuse understanding in the spyware concept, recent attempts to define it have been forced into compromises. The Anti-Spyware Coalition
Anti-Spyware Coalition
The Anti-Spyware Coalition is a group dedicated to building a consensus about definitions and best practices in the debate surrounding spyware and other potentially unwanted technologies....
(ASC) which is constituted by public interest groups, trade associations, and anti-spyware companies, have come to the conclusion that the term spyware should be used at two different abstraction levels . At the low level they use the following definition, which is similar to Steve Gibson’s original one:
However, since this definition does not capture all the different types of spyware available they also provide a wider definition, which is more abstract in its appearance:
-
Difficulties in defining spyware, forced the ASC to define what they call Spyware (and Other Potentially Unwanted Technologies) instead. In this term they include any software that does not have the users’ appropriate consent for running on their computers. Another group that has tried to define spyware is a group called StopBadware.orgStopbadwareStopBadware is a consumer-oriented nonprofit organization aimed at fighting malicious software, or "badware". It is the successor to StopBadware.org, a project started in 2006 at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. It spun off to become a standalone organization, and...
, which consists of actors such as Harvard Law SchoolHarvard Law SchoolHarvard Law School is one of the professional graduate schools of Harvard University. Located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it is the oldest continually-operating law school in the United States and is home to the largest academic law library in the world. The school is routinely ranked by the U.S...
, Oxford University, GoogleGoogleGoogle Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
, Lenovo, and Sun MicrosystemsSun MicrosystemsSun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...
. Their result is that they do not use the term spyware at all, but instead introduce the term badware. Their definition thereof span over seven pages, but the essence looks as follows :
-
Both definitions from ASC and StopBadware.org show the difficulty with defining spyware. We therefore regard the term spyware at two different abstraction levels. On the lower level it can be defined according to Steve Gibsons original definition. However, in its broader and in a more abstract sense the term spyware is hard to properly define, as concluded above.
Introducing privacy-invasive software
A joint conclusion is that it is important, for both software vendors and users, that a clear separation between acceptable and unacceptable software behaviour is established . The reason for this is the subjective nature of many spyware programs included, which result in inconsistencies between different users beliefs, i.e. what one user regards as legitimate software could be regarded as a spyware by others. As the spyware concept came to include increasingly more types of programs, the term got hollowed out, resulting in several synonyms, such as trackware, evilware and badware, all negatively emotive. We therefore choose to introduce the term privacy-invasive software to encapsulate all such software. We believe this term to be more descriptive than other synonyms without having as negative connotation. Even if we use the word invasive to describe such software, we believe that an invasion of privacyPrivacyPrivacy is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves and thereby reveal themselves selectively...
can be both desired and beneficial for the user as long as it is fully transparentTransparency (humanities)Transparency, as used in science, engineering, business, the humanities and in a social context more generally, implies openness, communication, and accountability. Transparency is operating in such a way that it is easy for others to see what actions are performed...
, e.g. when implementing specially user-tailored services or when including personalization features in software.
We used the work by Warkentins et al. (described in Section 7.3.1 in ) as a starting point when developing a classification of privacy-invasive software, where we classify privacy-invasive software as a combination between user consent and direct negative consequences. User consent is specified as either low, medium or high, while the degree of direct negative consequences span between tolerable, moderate, and severe. This classification allows us to first make a distinction between legitimate software and spyware, and secondly between spyware and malicious software. All software that has a low user consent, or which impairs severe direct negative consequences should be regarded as malware. While, on the other hand, any software that has high user consent, and which results in tolerable direct negative consequences should be regarded as legitimate software. By this follows that spyware constitutes the remaining group of software, i.e. those that have medium user consent or which impair moderate direct negative consequences. This classification is described in further detail in Chapter 7 in .
In addition to the direct negative consequences, we also introduce indirect negative consequences. By doing so our classification distinguishes between any negative behaviour a program has been designed to carry out (direct negative consequences) and security threats introduced by just having that software executing on the system (indirect negative consequences). One example of an indirect negative consequence is the exploitation risk of software vulnerabilities in programs that execute on users’ systems without their knowledge .
Comparison to malware
The term privacy-invasive software is motivated in that software types such as adware and spyware are essentially often defined according to their actions instead of their distribution mechanisms (as with most malware definitions, which also rarely correspond to motives of, e.g., business and commerce). The overall intention with the concept of privacy-invasive software is consequently to convey the commercial aspect of unwanted software contamination. The threats of privacy-invasive software consequently do not find their roots in totalitarianism, malice or political ideas, but rather in the free market, advanced technology and the unbridled exchange of electronic information. By the inclusion of purpose in its definition, the term privacy-invasive software is a contribution to the research community of privacy and security.
Internet goes commercial
In the mid-1990s, the development of the Internet increased rapidly due to the interest from the general public. One important factor behind this accelerating increase was the 1993 release of the first browser, called MosaicMosaic (web browser)Mosaic is the web browser credited with popularizing the World Wide Web. It was also a client for earlier protocols such as FTP, NNTP, and gopher. Its clean, easily understood user interface, reliability, Windows port and simple installation all contributed to making it the application that opened...
. This marked the birth of the graphically visible part of the Internet known as the World Wide WebWorld Wide WebThe World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
(WWW). Commercial interests became well aware of the potential offered by the WWW in terms of electronic commerce, and soon companies selling goods over the Internet emerged, i.e. pioneers such as book dealer Amazon.comAmazon.comAmazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...
and CD retailer CDNOW.comCDNOWCDNOW.com was an online retailer. The company was founded in February 1994 by twin brothers Jason Olim and Matthew Olim of Ambler, Pennsylvania...
, which both were founded in 1994 .
During the following years, personal computers and broadbandBroadbandThe term broadband refers to a telecommunications signal or device of greater bandwidth, in some sense, than another standard or usual signal or device . Different criteria for "broad" have been applied in different contexts and at different times...
connections to the Internet became more commonplace. Also, the increased use of the Internet resulted in that e-commerce transactions involved considerable amounts of money . As competition over customers intensified, some e-commerce companies turned to questionable methods in their battle to entice customers into completing transactions with them and . This opened ways for illegitimate actors to gain revenues by stretching the limits used with methods for collecting personal information and for propagating commercial advertisements. Buying such services allowed for some e-commerce companies to get an advantage over their competitors, e.g. by using advertisements based on unsolicited commercial messages (also known as spamE-mail spamEmail spam, also known as junk email or unsolicited bulk email , is a subset of spam that involves nearly identical messages sent to numerous recipients by email. Definitions of spam usually include the aspects that email is unsolicited and sent in bulk. One subset of UBE is UCE...
) .
Commercially motivated adverse software
The use of questionable techniques, such as SpamSpam (electronic)Spam is the use of electronic messaging systems to send unsolicited bulk messages indiscriminately...
, were not as destructive as the more traditional malicious techniques, e.g. computer virusComputer virusA computer virus is a computer program that can replicate itself and spread from one computer to another. The term "virus" is also commonly but erroneously used to refer to other types of malware, including but not limited to adware and spyware programs that do not have the reproductive ability...
es or trojan horsesTrojan horse (computing)A Trojan horse, or Trojan, is software that appears to perform a desirable function for the user prior to run or install, but steals information or harms the system. The term is derived from the Trojan Horse story in Greek mythology.-Malware:A destructive program that masquerades as a benign...
. Compared to such malicious techniques the new ones differed in two fundamental ways. First, they were not necessarily illegal, and secondly, their main goal was gaining money instead of creating publicity for the creator by reaping digital havoc. Therefore, these techniques grouped as a “grey” area next to the already existing “dark” side of the Internet.
Behind this development stood advertisers that understood that Internet was a “merchant’s utopia”, offering huge potential in global advertising coverage at a relatively low cost. By using the Internet as a global notice board, e-commerce companies could market their products through advertising agencies that delivered online ads to the masses. In 2004, online advertisement yearly represented between $500 million and $2 billion markets, which in 2005 increased to well over $6 billion-a-year and ]. The larger online advertising companies report annual revenues in excess of $50 million each . In the beginning of this development such companies distributed their ads in a broadcastBroadcastBroadcast or Broadcasting may refer to:* Broadcasting, the transmission of audio and video signals* Broadcast, an individual television program or radio program* Broadcast , an English electronic music band...
-like manner, i.e. they were not streamlined towards individual users’ interests. Some of these ads were served directly on Web sites as banner ads, but dedicated programs, called adwareAdwareAdware, or advertising-supported software, is any software package which automatically plays, displays, or downloads advertisements to a computer. These advertisements can be in the form of a pop-up. They may also be in the user interface of the software or on a screen presented to the user during...
, soon emerged. Adware were used to display ads through pop-upPop-UpPop Up is the debut album by French electropop trio Yelle. It was released in France on 3 September 2007 by the EMI-owned label Source Etc. The album peaked at number sixty-one on the French Albums Chart, and went on to sell 20,000 copies.-Promotion:...
windows without depending on any Internet access or Web pages.
The birth of spyware
In the search for more effective advertising strategies, these companies soon discovered the potential in ads that were targeted towards user interests. Once targeted online ads started to appear, the development took an unfortunate turn. Now, some advertisers developed software that became known as spywareSpywareSpyware is a type of malware that can be installed on computers, and which collects small pieces of information about users without their knowledge. The presence of spyware is typically hidden from the user, and can be difficult to detect. Typically, spyware is secretly installed on the user's...
, collecting users’ personal interests, e.g. through their browsing habits. Over the coming years spyware would evolve into a significant new threat to Internet-connected computers, bringing along reduced system performance and security. The information gathered by spyware were used for constructing user profiles, including personal interests, detailing what users could be persuaded to buy. The introduction of online advertisements also opened a new way to fund software development by having the software display advertisements to its users. By doing so the software developer could offer their software “free of charge”, since they were paid by the advertising agency. Unfortunately, many users did not understand the difference between “free of charge” and a “free gift”, where difference is that a free gift is given without any expectations of future compensation, while something provided free of charge expects something in return. A dental examination that is provided free of charge at a dentist school is not a free gift. The school expects gained training value and as a consequence the customer suffers increased risks. As adware were combined with spyware, this became a problem for computer users. When downloading software described as “free of charge” the users had no reason to suspect that it would report on for instance their Internet usage, so that presented advertisements could be targeted towards their interests.
Some users probably would have accepted to communicate their browsing habits because of the positive feedback, e.g. “offers” relevant to their interests. However, the fundamental problem was that users were not properly informed about neither the occurrence nor the extent of such monitoring, and hence were not given a chance to decide on whether to participate or not. As advertisements became targeted, the borders between adware and spyware started to dissolve, combining both these programs into a single one, that both monitored users and delivered targeted ads. The fierce competition soon drove advertisers to further “enhance” the ways used for serving their ads, e.g. replacing user-requested content with sponsored messages instead, before showing it to the users.
The arms-race between spyware vendors
As the chase for faster financial gains intensified, several competing advertisers turned to use even more illegitimate methods in an attempt to stay ahead of their competitors. This targeted advertising accelerated the whole situation and created a “gray” between conventional adds that people chose to see, such as subscribing to an Internet site & adds pushed on users through "pop-up adds" or downloaded adds displayed in a program itself. This practice pushed Internet advertising closer to the “dark” side of Spam & other types of invasive, privacy compromising advertising . During this development, users experienced infections from unsolicited software that crashed their computers by accident, change application settings, harvested personal information, and deteriorated their computer experience . Over time these problems led to the introduction of countermeasures in the form of anti-spyware tools.
These tools purported to clean computers from spyware, adware, and any other type of shady software located in that same “grey” area. This type of software can lead to false positives as some types of legitimate software came to be branded by some users as "Spyware" (i.e. Spybot: Search & Destroy identifies the ScanSpyware program as a Spybot.) These tools were designed similarly to anti-malwareMalwareMalware, short for malicious software, consists of programming that is designed to disrupt or deny operation, gather information that leads to loss of privacy or exploitation, or gain unauthorized access to system resources, or that otherwise exhibits abusive behavior...
tools, such as Antivirus softwareAntivirus softwareAntivirus or anti-virus software is used to prevent, detect, and remove malware, including but not limited to computer viruses, computer worm, trojan horses, spyware and adware...
. Anti-spyware tools identify programs using signatures (semantics, program code, or other identifying attributes). The process only works on known programs, which can lead to the false positives mentioned earlier & leave previously unknown spyware undetected. To further aggravate the situation, a few especially illegitimate companies distributed fake anti-spyware tools in their search for a larger piece of the online advertising market. These fake tools claimed to remove spyware, but instead installed their own share of adware and spyware on unwitting users’ computers. Sometimes even accompanied by the functionality to remove adware and spyware from competing vendors. Anti-Spyware has become a new area of online vending with fierce competition.
New spyware programs are being added to the setting in what seems to be a never-ending stream, although the increase has levelled out somewhat over the last years. However, there still does not exist any consensus on a common spyware definition or classification, which negatively affects the accuracy of anti-spyware tools. As mentioned above, some spyware programs remain undetected on users’ computers and . Developers of anti-spyware programs officially state that the fight against spyware is more complicated than the fight against virusesComputer virusA computer virus is a computer program that can replicate itself and spread from one computer to another. The term "virus" is also commonly but erroneously used to refer to other types of malware, including but not limited to adware and spyware programs that do not have the reproductive ability...
, trojan horsesTrojan horse (computing)A Trojan horse, or Trojan, is software that appears to perform a desirable function for the user prior to run or install, but steals information or harms the system. The term is derived from the Trojan Horse story in Greek mythology.-Malware:A destructive program that masquerades as a benign...
, and wormsComputer wormA computer worm is a self-replicating malware computer program, which uses a computer network to send copies of itself to other nodes and it may do so without any user intervention. This is due to security shortcomings on the target computer. Unlike a computer virus, it does not need to attach...
.
Predicted future development
There are several trends integrating computers and software into people’s daily lives. One example is traditional media-oriented products which are being integrated into a single device, called media centresHome theater PCA Home Theater PC or Media Center appliance is a convergence device that combines some or all the capabilities of a personal computer with a software application that supports video, photo, music playback, and sometimes video recording functionality...
. These media centres include the same functionality as conventional television, DVDDVDA DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
-players, and stereo equipment, but combined with an Internet connected computer. In a foreseeable future these media centres are anticipated to reach vast consumer impact . In this setting, spyware could monitor and surveillance for instance what television channels are being watched, when/why users change channel or what DVDDVDA DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
movies users have purchased and watch. This is information that is highly attractive for any advertising or media-oriented corporation to obtain. This presents us with a probable scenario where spyware is tailored towards these new platforms; the technology needed is to a large extent the same as is used in spyware today.
Another interesting area for spyware vendors is the increasing amount of mobile devices being shipped. Distributors of advertisements have already turned their eyes to these devices. So far this development have not utilized the geographic position data stored in these devices. However, during the time of this writing companies are working on GPS-guided ads and coupons destined for mobile phones and hand-held devices . In other words, development of location-based marketing that allow advertising companies to get access to personal geographical data so that they can serve geographically dependent ads and coupons to their customers. Once such geographic data is being harvested and correlated with already accumulated personal information, another privacy barrier has been crossed.
-