For some reason, though, we don't allow that sort of privacy violation in our actual lives.
However, most real-world businesses manage to do quite well even with our rude dismissals of their desire to track us.
[edit]
Not so much. Your phone carrier tracks all your movements. Your credit car company knows every swipe. Your bank sells your information to retailers. The leasing you did on that car got you into a database of new car owners. Right after you married you started getting offers from Home Depot. And with your mortgage you started getting calls from brokers, asking if you want to put it back in the rental market...
The "real world" may not track your anonymous movements yet (NYPD cameras, anyone?), but other than that I don't see much difference. In fact it's the opposite; the non-online world is more opaque, harder to opt-out, and much more invasive, as it usually involves PII.
Another difference to consider: the motivations. In the 'real world', we used to pay for goods. In the past you'd walk to your newsstand and buy the NYT edition for $2.50 (with ads). Nowadays, people feel outraged[1] if the exact same goods aren't given away for free (as in beer), and with no trackers, no registration, no ads, no anti-ad-blockers.
Something has to give.
Today I rarely find out about anything from ads. Instead I find out from sites like HN, slashdot, etc or from social network connections and groups
Are you sure you're not being tracked? There are technologies like Prism[1] that allow stores to track people, where they go, how long they stay there, etc. On the lower-tech side, point cards[2] are also used to track purchasing habits.
[2] http://consumerist.com/2012/02/17/target-figures-out-teen-gi...
Nomi is a startup that does exactly this. They use open WiFi networks to harvest MAC addresses of cell phones and track people's locations that way.
The only way to "opt out" is to register your MAC address with them. (Aside from just disabling WiFi on your phone, of course).
Welcome to the future :(
Instead of waiting for an SSID beacon, they just broadcast their known networks and if one of them is in range, the AP will reply. It's all driven by user demand to connect to their WiFi network faster.
Also, AFIAK, this is required behaviour to join networks that don't broadcast their SSID (e.g. "hidden" networks).
I see two solutions to this problem, but neither are really tenable from a user perspective:
1) run the GPS all the time and geotag known APs[1]
2) leave the WiFi radio on all the time and passively listen for SSID broadcasts[2]
[1] doesn't work indoors, or if the location of an AP is changed (e.g. 4G hotspot). Will also have significant impact on battery runtime, and likely to be abused by ad companies
[2] will have significant impact on battery runtime
Actually, people do. Take for example supermarket loyalty cards: every purchase is logged. It compounds with online tracking too: when you then login to the online site to check your points or view offers, the information about your purchases can then be linked to web analytics and other profiled data.
We do, but apparently many even on HN don't realize it. Brick and mortar stores track customers through their phone signals (providing unique identifiers and location), cameras that can track where people go in the store and even what they look at, and more. Here are a couple of good resources where I've learned about it (though they cover much more than those issues):
Most companies that collect data use it to make money. That's not true ONLY on the web.
> For some reason, though, we don't allow that sort of privacy violation in our actual lives.
Really? Do you have any grocery store loyalty cards? Do you use a credit card? That data is shared and sold. Do you do any activities that show up on your credit report, like pay bills to a utility? That data is shared and sold. That's how the credit rating agency got it. Do you have a set-top box? It's probably selling data on what shows you watch. Do you have a cell phone? Location data.
If you actually restricted yourself to purchases which don't involve anybody who shares your data, you'd be living in a cave.
Because shops never monitor footfall in certain aisles. Of course real-world businesses do this. Plus all those people who carry loyalty cards.