Obama Romney Campaigns online tracking exposed. This needs a debate.

More and more, privacy has become an issue and with the new, increasing sophistication of tracking, it is something to be concerned about. After all, when you visit a site and at a simplistic level, get a cookie, we know where you go and what you do. And it's used for ad targeting.

But a report from the US regarding the Presidential election, has exposed the advances made in tracking. Worrying advances.

Both Obama and Romney have ramped up their sites tracking capabilities to understand and target voters better. Unprecedented tools that create profiles about your habits on the web and therefore, target personalised Ads when you visit other sites. BarrackObama.com hosts an astonishing 160 unique tracking technologies. Romney has 110. So think about how much they know about site users. How much they know about YOU.

It's argued that this is new advertising techniques in a digital world, but the key issue is that users don't know they're being tracked so extensively. Online data collectors will benefit from this hugely and it's not disclosed on their homepages (yeah, it's in the real small print). So that's okay then? not really.

Most people are unhappy being tracked - a recent poll suggested 60% - but I think that's low. Most people I know, resent it full stop. 

Both politicos too, send targeted emails - but Obama's campaign seems to have brought this skill to the nth degree. They've embedded Facebook names of friends encouraging you to get them to vote - so they know who your friends are. 

In my view anyway, and coming from the Ad side, this needs a debate. It's beginning to get unacceptable. I blogged before about Facebook having the right, which they do, to use your photos commercially for example. How about your picture appearing in an Ad without you knowing? Happy? So Facebook is now the biggest photo library in town - without your permission (oh, sorry, yes it's in the small print). But you didn't know that?

That's the issue.
Permission.

No tracking without representation - there you go, a campaign slogan already.