The subversive database

The big scare used to be tracking cookies - you know, little textpads of information stored on your computer, accessible over dozens of sites that carried the same ad banners (It's a huge market too - DoubleClick and aQuantive were bought out big-time this year). The cool thing about these guys is that even your "block 3rd-party cookies" didn't actually block them, because the cookie was tagged on the image's server, not the webpage. So you surfed around the 'net, feeling anonymous while these crawlers snagged your digital vitals. A lot of information (your IP reveals your location and your referrer reveals the last page you looked at) can be extracted from simple web-browsing, and in the end tracking cookies don't really matter. Why? Because connected websites can track you anyway. They don't need to stash a piece of text on your computer to do it, they just need to communicate with other websites. Kind of like the way creditors share information about your history, sorting you into purchasing profiles and assigning you scores. While this information does sometimes compute to higher prices for certain users, it will likely be circumvented as long as there are buying incentives like bargain websites (and maybe, just renewing your IP address). Are you leaving it up to Amazon to provide a deal that you can't refuse at the highest price you're willing to pay? That's what eBay does with your consent, and Nathan's article argues that well. What he doesn't mention are the costs for the seller - which, between ebay and paypal fees markup to around 15% - which I feel are causing inflation within the market. Granted, it's a larger user-base, but why should a broken LCD screen go for just $100 less than a brand new one, warranty and all? It probably has something to do with the small fortunes that can be gained in the repair/resell of listings (Beanie Babies, anyone?).