The Security Mentor

That's a real quote (see below).

Marketers pay big money to track what you do on the Web. It's a little creepy anytime but especially creepy if you do your taxes online. David Lazarus in the San Francisco Chronicle has an article about web bugs in tax preparation services. Lazarus quotes people from the tax preparation firm and their marketing partners admitting that they could collect confidential information. Since that's not the business they're in, they don't have much reason to, and spokeswoman Julie Miller from the tax preparation company said "if we didn't uphold our privacy commitment, we wouldn't be here."

Oh-kay ... but is everyone who works for the marketing affiliates, their outsourced vendors, and so on honest? And are their computer systems secure? And has any company ever really been put out of business for violating its customers's privacy?

Meanwhile you can protect your privacy on the technical front. The people trackers use a simple but clever technology called a "Web beacon" or "web bug" which is nothing more than an invisible image from the marketing firm's computer on the page of the company you're patronizing. The trick is that the marketing company keeps notes every time your web browser fetches that image. Firefox lets you avoid the entire situation. Go to the Tools menu, choose Options, choose Web Features, and click the checkbox for Load Images From the Originating Web Site Only. That's all. You may miss out on a little bit of content. You can always make exceptions for legitimate images.