[117967] in Cypherpunks
You're Being Followed -- Virtually
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Anonymous)
Thu Sep 16 19:22:53 1999
Date: Fri, 17 Sep 1999 00:55:13 +0200 (CEST)
Message-Id: <199909162255.AAA16233@mail.replay.com>
From: Anonymous <nobody@replay.com>
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Reply-To: Anonymous <nobody@replay.com>
You're Being Followed -- Virtually
With Web companies sharing consumer data, will
there be any privacy online?
by Reuters
September 16, 1999, 8:23 a.m. PT
Vignette and Edocs, two Internet companies that collect data from
consumers online, Wednesday formed an alliance that will enable
them to share the information they gather and build richer
profiles on individual spending patterns.
The deal will join data on general consumer interests collected by
Vignette, with specific information on their bills, from Edocs,
which makes Internet payment solutions so people can pay their
bills online.
Edocs, for example, might be able to build a list of consumers
with high phone bills, while Vignette, which follows Web surfing
patterns, would be able to see which individuals are shopping for
cell phones. Combining these two sets of data could help cell phone
companies more effectively market different products to
consumers based on their individual habits.
Much of the information Vignette gathers comes from software it
makes to help consumers customize different Web sites so they
can isolate the content that is of particular interest to them. The
company makes software for more than 290 companies in the
telecommunications high-tech and automobile industries, among
others.
Edocs also has several Fortune 100 companies among its
customers.
While the companies say they do not currently share any of the
same customers, they expect the product they will jointly develop
will be useful to both sets of customers.
They also say the partnership will enable them to offer better
online bill payment solutions that could let customers integrate
more of their bill paying on a single Internet portal instead of
having to go to different company Web sites.
