Begin to research anything on the web today, whether on your computer, mobile, or other smart device and you will undoubtedly experience the inter-connectedness of the interweb as a simple website view or search request could result in your data being brokered to 100’s of destinations. One news site I visited enumerated more than 900 third-party sites that would receive some information on my visit. This information then continues to be enriched and brokered in a seemingly endless cycle of commerce known and unknown.
Oh they do certainly care about your Privacy, as in they want all of it. Of course you likely won’t see warnings this detailed if you’re accessing these sites from the United States where there are few, if any, privacy protection laws. What do these partners all do? Well, I’m glad you asked.
Tracking, information harvesting, data-enrichment, data-brokering, and those are just first level partners. As terrible as this is, the offending site at least has some relationship with these sites. The chance they have any idea what happens after it’s run through those partners is substantially zero. This is the state of the Media Interwebs today and increasingly, if you clamp down and desire to restrict your data sites don’t work or, as with the recently announced LinkedIn Terms of Service update, you’re invited to leave.