computer – on a site-specific,
individual-specific basis. Information captured on an
individual member basis includes every site visited, page
viewed, ad seen, promotion used, product or service
bought, and price paid.
[…]
It is extremely challenging, even with a consumer’s opt-in
permission, to capture information communicated to and
from a browser in a secure session (e.g. any purchase
transaction). In order to do this successfully, technology is
required that “securely monitors a secure connection”.
[C]omScore’s patent-pending technology does this at no
incremental cost to comScore or risk to the panelists…’
As dubious as this may sound, remember that some security
products provide gateway-based tools to open and examine
SSL connections out of a network. Whilst this is culturally
rather different to placing a market-research-oriented SSL
proxy on every PC, it is technically and functionally similar.
Like many technologies, whether it is good or evil depends on
how it is used, and who is using it.
Q. Let’s return to where we started, namely the subversion of
the endpoint via malware and potentially unwanted
applications. Will improvements in operating system security
help prevent users being ‘marketscored’ by criminals?
A. There is a long answer to that, in which we could look at
some of the new features of Windows Vista, such as User
Access Control, which tries to restrict the subversive use of
the administrator account, and at the features of SELinux,
which does away with the idea of an all-powerful account
completely.
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