Many people worry about what companies will do with all the data they are collecting on web behavior. Virtually every major website is keeping tabs your behavior through a variety of tags and various web analytics and tracking technology. Most are just tracking your actions on their site, but more and more companies are coming up with new innovative ways to track your behavior as you cross web domains, principally through the use of tracking cookies.

A recent Wall Street Journal article examining the 50 most popular US websites comments on the fact that many top internet firms aren’t even aware that 3rd party vendors are using their site to place such code on your computer. These 50 sites collectively placed over 3000 tracking files on a test computer with over 2/3rd of those files installed by 131 other companies “many of which are in the business of tracking Web users to create rich databases of consumer profiles that can be sold”.

Companies will claim that this monitoring is the price we pay for free services on the internet. Basic economics state this is not the case.

Companies have the ability to make a buck based on your work and are seizing it without even a thought towards compensating you for you data. Many don’t even ask for you permission and some have developed new flash-based cookies that redeploy themselves even after you have deleted them. At least supermarket, department and other big box stores have to ask, if you want to sign up for their “preferred customer tracking cards” and then use incentives to use them each time.

Since the data carries no value to a consumer, tremendous value to marketers and there is little harm in sharing, I say compensate consumers for their data. This practice is common place in surveys and study groups. All I’m saying is you should get your 1/10th of a penny.

New America calls a feature in the latest Google Android phone “A Malicious Root Kit”.

…one of the microchips embedded into the G2 prevents device owners from making permanent changes that allow custom modifications to the the Android operating system. This is the same Android that purposefully opened up its source code under the Apache License, allowing anyone to use, modify, and redistribute the operating system code even if they choose not to contribute back to the development community. Even among other Android computing devices and phones, the G2 is touted as an open platform.

Unfortunately, the hardware in this device completely undermines this license by allowing mobile network providers to override end-user changes to the source code. Wireless network operators have deployed a hardware rootkit that restricts modifications to a device owned by the user. This would be akin to a computer sold with Microsoft Windows containing chip that prevented users from installing Linux or another operating system of their choice.

How excited are you to buy one?

Imagine a car that each time it started would remove all your performance enhancements and return to stock.

Imagine a house that every time you opened the door had the same wiring and plumbing (issues) as when you first bought it.

Yeah, me either. Why does HTC’s Android phone want to race with Apple to the opposite of cool?

I noted an interesting section of a CNN article on Stanford’s MBA program. The article is about MBA applications declining at the school but it paints an odd picture of how the program is managed.

[Director of Admissions] Bolton could just as easily come off as a CIA officer in Islamabad. He weaves and bobs his way around questions, often reluctant to surrender what you might consider harmless details, including his age.

Unlike many administrators at the school, Bolton has no résumé or biography on Stanford’s website. Why? “It’s not about me,” he says plainly. “The more people try to get into my head, the more of a disservice they do to themselves.”

When you ask Bolton how often he reverses a decision by his admissions team, he says: “It would be a number.” And when you ask how many of the 389 students in the class of 2012 have GMAT scores below 700, he says, “We report the things that we report.”

Pressed, he still declines an answer.

“One question,” he explains, “just leads to another question which leads to another question. There is no end to this. We’ll be asked, ‘How many marketers who are Portuguese who studied architecture in undergrad and live in Minneapolis are there in the class?’ There is a lot of information that applicants want that has no value to them in the process.”

You could say the same about any set of questions, yet questions still get answered.

Why not answer questions and only stop when a question is unreasonable, instead of stopping every question and refusing to answer? Define a level of unreasonableness and let people know what is acceptable.

“It would be a number” sounds intentionally evasive and opaque, instead of saying I am afraid I can not answer that because of x. It is like he is in battle, trying to deflect rather than absorb or block the pointy tips fired at him. At least he does not taunt those who seek information — “You want answers? Ha ha! Try and get them.”

The article puts Bolton in an unfavorable light. He seems to say that no question can be reasonable — data shared can not be questioned. That should raise eyebrows and put the admissions process and perhaps the whole program under more scrutiny for better transparency. The demand for more transparency in business, after recent market failures and fraud cases, perhaps makes more scrutiny of the management ethics and transparency of MBA programs timely as well as appropriate.