How private should your online browsing history be? Your thoughts
New MIT project encourages users to share some of their web activity with others
A new research project is letting you share what you do on the web.
The project, called Eyebrowse, is designed by MIT researchers and keeps track of all the websites you visit. You can then choose which parts of your web history you would like to share with others.
- Eyebrowse project lets users make web browsing history public
- 'Sensitive' searches yield embarrassing targeted ads
The project researchers say its purpose is to make our online spaces a bit more public. The tool also measures how long you have spent on each site.
We asked what you thought about it: How private should your online browsing history be? Would you be comfortable sharing your data? What is the point?
You had your say via CBC Forum, our experiment to encourage a different kind of conversation on our website. Here are some of the most insightful comments from that discussion.
Please note that user names are not necessarily the names of commenters. Some comments have been altered to correct spelling and to conform to CBC style. Click on the user name to see the comment in the blog format.
Most commenters called for greater online privacy.
Many did not like or understand the premise of the MIT project.
- "I think your online browsing history should be very private. Only for you to see and not for anybody else to see." — Dohn Pratt
- "If someone followed me around everywhere I went they'd be called a stalker and could be jailed. Internet travel should be the considered the same as our public travels ... our computers also includes our private thoughts." — generic
Several believed we should be getting paid for the online data that is collected about us.
- "We should be getting paid now for our private data that the greed tanks won't share with anyone other than other corps and CSIS. Just imagine how many bits of info one puts out in a day…" — Jim
Others questioned why the study was even necessary.
- "Some online spaces are frequently visited in the sense of public sphere, while others more in the sense of public bathroom ... If they mean that they want to encourage more civil discourse, isn't that what Twitter and other social media are for?" — Neal Thomas