Internet Spying, a Rapidly Growing Business

BrainSell has recently started using Pardot, a marketing automation and lead management tool. One of the coolest things is the simplest feature; lead tracking by reverse DNS look up. A cookie tracks a visitor’s every move on your site. If they fill out a form, you can track them by name. It’s a little creepy, but it’s a great tool. Before you call the prospect, you know exactly which pages they’ve visited and and for how long. You’re one step ahead.

But some companies are taking this to the next level.  A New York company, Lotame Solutions, can profile Internet users by inspecting their participation on various social media outlets. Once people are profiled, they are sold for as little as a tenth of a cent. This kind of business is booming, it’s one of the fastest growing in fact.

Julia Angwin of the Wall St. Journal explains it well.

“Ms. Hayes-Beaty is being monitored by Lotame Solutions Inc., a New York company that uses sophisticated software called a “beacon” to capture what people are typing on a website—their comments on movies, say, or their interest in parenting and pregnancy. Lotame packages that data into profiles about individuals, without determining a person’s name, and sells the profiles to companies seeking customers. Ms. Hayes-Beaty’s tastes can be sold wholesale (a batch of movie lovers is $1 per thousand) or customized (26-year-old Southern fans of “50 First Dates”).”

Creepy, right?

Would buy leads that way? How much value do they hold?

For Angwin’s full article, click HERE.