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tech_review 00218.txt

#How much Is Your Privacy Worth? Anyone paying attention knows that his or her Web searches, Facebook feeds, and other online activity isn always safee it from the prying eyes of the NSA or those of the companies providing a social networking service. While a substantial chunk of the populace finds all this tracking creepy and invasive, though, there a demographic that collectively shrugs at the notion of being mined for data. Some startups hope to exploit this by buying access to your Web browsing and banking data (see ell Your Personal data for $8 a Month. Luth Research, a San diego company is now offering companies an unprecedented window into the private digital domains of tens of thousands of people who have agreed to let much of what they do on a smartphone, tablet, or PC be tracked for a $100 a month. Luth Q Intelligenceservice collects and analyzes data from preselected participantsphones and computers via a virtual private network connection. Data is routed through the company servers where it is collected and analyzed for trends. The company doesn view the contents of messages, but what it does gather includes where smartphone users are given at any moment, what websites they are visiting, what queries they are feeding into Google, and how often they check Twitter. The program participants are asked also to answer questions about their behavior. Luth current and former clients include Subway, Microsoft, Walmart, the San diego padres, Nickelodeon, and Netflix. The information it collects can help companies decide where to spend advertising dollars. Advertisers want better targeting because click-through rates for online ads now stands at less than. 01 percent. Luth did a project for Ford motor company this yearord wanted to better understand customersath to purchase. The company rounded up research subjects in the market for a car and then tracked the journey they took from researching to finally buying. A customer might drive to a dealership, browse other automakerswebsites while there, and research financing options later. All of that behavior can be analyzed to help Ford figure out where to best spend its advertising dollars. If it turns out that consumer review sites are a prominent part of the process, for instance, Ford can focus on commissioning reviews, partnering with the sites, and buying ads there. Ultimately, Luth found that by the time a customer actually visits a car manufacturer website, theye most likely ready to buy a car. hat a big deal, says the company senior executive for marketing, Becky Wu. e didn know that until this project. If you know that person is really ready to buy, it a hot lead. If it also sounds annoying and intrusive, youe probably not the best candidate for ZQ Intelligence. But as many as 20,000 PC users and 6, 000 smartphone users are given, at any time, subjecting themselves to such scrutiny in exchange for $100 a month or so, depending on how many surveys they fill out. Luth hawks that data to the highest bidder. Wu says her company approach is especially valuable because clients can ask participants follow-up questions about their behavior. Luth founder and CEO Roseanne Luth, says participants can uninstall the software anytime they want (though theyl stop earning any money at that point. eople are willing to be tracked as long as theye in control, Luth says. In a survey of 1, 100 smartphone users by Punchtab, an advertising company, in April 27 percent of respondents said they would allow themselves to be tracked by retailers on mobile devices as long as they got something in returnuch as coupons or sales alerts. Big communications companies are figuring that out, too. Last month, Verizon announced a new loyalty program for its 100 million U s. wireless customers, offering them mart Rewardsfor allowing some of their location and Web browsing behavior to be tracked and sold to marketers. This kind of tracking will only get more sophisticated. Luth says it is working on a program that will incorporate the audio in a person environment with the data being collected to try to determine what theye doing. Any new insight into the way we think is valuable it seems, at least to someone h

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