• by Dave Morgan , Featured Contributor, September 14, 2006

David Kesmodel wrote a great column in yesterday's The Wall Street Journal about his attempt to "go anonymous" on the Web. After the brouhaha over AOL's release of users' search data, he decided to see what it would be like to surf the Internet as anonymously as possible. To accomplish this, he installed on his computer a software program called Anonymous Surfing that hides a browser's IP address from the Web servers that it visits, and he also cleared all of his cookies from his browser after every session, insuring that with each new surfing session, he would not be recognizable to Web sites that rely on cookies.

What did he learn?

He learned that Web surfing that way was much more difficult. As he surfed the Net "cloaked," he found himself confronted with longer load times, error pages, and having to spend time re-entering logins on registration-driven news sites and shopping sites. Basically, he found out that the Internet works better if you don't disable some of the key technologies that help content and commerce companies optimize their sites and business models for different browsers. He also learned that he wasn't getting ads on news sites that were tailored to his browsing, and that he couldn't see optimized product recommendations on his favorite commerce site.

What can we learn from this?

It is great to see journalists at high-profile general interest business publications engaging in these kinds of exercises. They are helping to demystify Internet privacy, where most of the dialogue has been driven by a few, quite biased vocal advocates (disclosure: I am a quite biased advocate on this issue as well, since my company operates a behavioral targeting ad network, and I chair the Interactive Advertising Bureau's Cookie Management Task Force).

I believe that the more folks understand how server-based technologies that recognize and respond to specific cookies and/or IP addresses actually operate, the more comfortable they will be with them. Specifically:

• Personal v. anonymous data. There is a big difference between personal information and anonymous browsing data, the bulk of the information that is used by Web publisher and advertisers. Accidental or wrongful disclosures of the former, which get all of the headlines, are crushing to the industry and need to be stopped. Personal information should stay personal and protected. Anonymous data is a different matter, and by its nature means that it can never be connected with a specific person. That kind of data is used in life everyday by almost all companies that consumers interact with, in activities ranging from generating reward coupons at stores to measuring billboard viewership, to positioning products on grocery store shelves.

• The Internet's addressable architecture. The Internet architecture is optimized to facilitate one-to-one connections among browsers and servers. If you disable or obfuscate key technologies like cookies or IP addresses that help browsers and servers communicate, you will invariably hurt the Internet's ability to perform as it should. Further, you hurt its ability to support the delivery of better content, whether that is personalized news, or more relevant ads, or personalized commerce offerings. For many consumers, this is why they use the Web rather than traditional media or traditional channels. That is what makes it different and special.

• Free content business model. The only reason that there is free content on the Internet is because advertisers and marketers have learned that it is a great place to advertise and sell things. Doing that well means making products and services relevant to consumers. Making it easy for consumers to find what they need or want---or would want if they knew about it---is one of the reasons that online is already supporting billions and billions of dollars of commerce and advertising and is growing at such an extraordinary pace. Some degree of audience intelligence and addressability is the quid pro quo for the free content. That is the way that it works. Most consumers understand that and support that. They must, for if they didn't, they would find their browsing much more restricted, much less satisfying, and much more expensive.

Here's to hoping more mainstream business and consumer media spend some time putting themselves in the shoes of real consumers as they surf the Web.