Of course, on many of those social media outlets, it’s the user who is knowingly posting their opinions, pictures and videos. However, do they also realize by posting those photos, stories, the information is now in the public domain? Hopefully, they do. But what about when outsiders track people online without their knowledge and consent? For what purposes are they tracking that data? And who owns a person’s online history, anyway?

According to Steve Smith, President of GrowthSource Coaching, a business and executive coaching firm in California, concerns about privacy in this increasingly competitive and tech-savvy world are rampant and justified. Just what are some of the things people who track customer information doing with the data? They not only monitor the purchases people make online but also track their search histories. “Marketers track the ways people conduct their online searches to determine which ads should be targeted at which consumers,” Smith says.

Dr. Ronald Sims, the Floyd Dewey Gottwald Senior Professor of Business Administration at the College of William and Mary, says retail giant Target is one mega-store that tracks consumers this way. One example is this: Target has a Baby’s Club that invites pregnant women to join. The store offers discounts on newborn-related purchases and makes articles relating to pregnancy and parenting available, too. The more a user clicks on certain articles or purchases specific items, the easier it is for Target to know when the baby is due? The company then sends them ads featuring items often bought at that stage of the pregnancy. 

Is that an invasion of privacy or just smart marketing?

Retailers know that Millennials and members of Gen Y don’t watch as much television as people of the same age who lived before tech toys, such as laptops and smartphones, became mainstream. Those age groups, Sims says, “don’t watch commercials or watch TV much.” Therefore, it just makes sense for businesses to spend advertising coin on the Internet.

The million dollar question for retailers is “’How do I get the biggest bang for my advertising dollar?’” Sims asks.

Legitimate Concerns

This tracking is creating enormous caches of information about people that could be used for nefarious purposes if it falls into the wrong hands, Smith says.

This raises the question about whose rights are more important, the consumer’s or the company spending millions to track people’s activities online. By surfing online, are people voluntarily waiving their right to privacy?

“We as consumers have to be concerned with all the data we even inadvertently share with marketers and other companies. Millennials want access but the cost is the mining of personal data," Sims says. "Because of that, companies mining that data should recognize they have an ethical obligation to protect the data.” 

The ethics of data mining is a huge concern that must be dealt with, Smith says. One way a company can prove it values its customer’s privacy is by creating policies against the sharing of information it gleans by tracking online activities, he says. The privacy policy should also be clear the company won’t sell any information they gain, he says.

Establishing standards for companies to follow so they understand how to protect a consumer’s privacy is vital, Smith says. Certainly, however, such an incredibly enormous task won’t be easy.

“We don’t have anyone to set those limits, so right now it’s a free-for-all,” Sims says.

Tami Kamin Meyer is an Ohio attorney and writer.