Sentinel.com blog

Today’s Sentinel editorial points your attention to recent investigations about what companies are doing with online information.

If you plan to spend much time at all online, and if you’re much into the world of social media, it’s worth reading the Wall Street Journal’s investigative series and today’s editorial in the Sentinel.

On the other hand, the Sentinel website is also busy gathering information about your behavior when you visit. We want to track what interests you, what gadget you’re using, how much time you spend, where you’re coming from, etc., etc. We’re not great about doing anything at all with that information, except being generally informed about how people are using our site.

It would be nice if we did a better job of connecting our online readers with advertising that they might most be interested in receiving. Better still, it would be nice if our site did a better job of anticipating the things that you’re seeking, news-wise, information-wise, photo-wise, consumer-wise. We’re working on it, but not anywhere near the sophisticated level of the Googles and Facebooks of the world.

Every business does as much information gathering from its customers as possible, whether in the online or real world.

Over here on the online side of things, we find the reporting impressive and the subject important, but that there’s not really that much to fear. Most sites want to know more about you, with the idea of serving you better. There are exceptions, but there’s one easy rule for internet users (and this should be shared with every kid everywhere): Consider your online time public information.