Standing on the Celebrus Technologies booth at ExactTarget Connections UK 2011 yesterday, I had a couple of references made to me that got me thinking “That’s a bit Big Brother like to me…”. That may be true in the online space, but you telling me most of us who drive a car, use a debit/credit card, travel on the train, walk into a high street shop, are naive enough to think that you’re not being ‘tracked’ by an even bigger brother?

Every road near the office has a road ‘traffic’ camera on it – but are we sure it’s only traffic they’re monitoring? Are we sure they don’t take down your registration number and count the number of times a day you use that road?

What about when you walk into a shop – what are they doing with the camera footage they have taken of you?
What about every transaction made on your credit/debit card? How much YOU spent, where YOU spent YOUR money, WHO you paid it to and so on.

What about the London Underground – what station did you enter, which station did you leave – what was your route?

You see, BIG BROTHER is everywhere – isn’t it therefore only ‘normal’ that some online monitoring is also taking place? Perhaps more to the point, if I really can make your experience better (online or offline – and I really do mean, make it better!!), then is a platform that performs detailed observations a bad thing? After all, if the platform is genuine and not malicious in any way, you can always ‘Opt-out’ by the click of a mouse button…

Either way, the choice is yours. Personally, I encourage it.

Related posts:

1. What Happens When You Get Individual Insight Right?
2. What Do Visitor, Weather, a CDH And Online Performance Have In Common?
3. Demand on the increase for detailed individual insight
4. Why should brands own private online communities?
5. Is Customer Intelligence Delivering Results?