We call at the chemists and are given loyalty cards. We can obtain points by using our card as we buy. The greater our spending, the more points we get. With a lot of loyalty cards we are given special offers for articles we pick up regularly. Well if the shop knows what we pick up regularly, they are surely scrutinizing our shopping.

Yes, this is the true reason for their loyalty cards. These companies want to know what we are picking up. Which of us buy what. Who they have to be advertising certain things to. Well, we all know this in reality, but we like the thought of getting money back, or fuel, or special treats, so we take the loyalty card despite ourselves. Even our banks are now alerted when we go on holiday, and if we have not let them know before we go, our bank funds are frozen, to protect us from fraud, but again it shows how our movements are being traced.

So now with the expansion of the Internet Business, we make purchases on line. We may Work From Home and think to use the web to search for things we want. This may be as simple as doing our normal supermarket shopping via the web. If we do, we will find that the next time we go to the virtual shop, many of the Online Jobs are sorted for us, we do not have to remember all the items we popped in our basket last time, and what area of the virtual supermarket they are, the site remembers we chose these items and prompts us to place them in our basket.

If we are using a search engine for occasional queries, we start adding our query and are prompted by similar inputs we have entered previously – is this what we are looking for again?

As I Work From Home, I often use an on line bookstore to pick up specific books I may need. I am prompted to verify that it is me and not somebody else who is searching through their company site, then they advise me, as I search, what other people who have made similar purchases also bought. So, they know who I am, what I have bought in the past and what other folk with similar tastes have also chosen. The Internet Business is certainly very complex!

When we search through internet sites, looking for information, perhaps in relation to something we have read, we may often see a counter on a web page, advising how many people have visited this web site. They are monitoring traffic through their web site. Perhaps they want to know which pages are of most interest to other people, or it could be they just want a general idea of how popular their web site is, but somehow when we click on their web site, they know.

As we all do many more Online Jobs and tasks we would have gone to the library to do before, or gone to the local high street with cash, we leave a trail which is easy to follow. We are making ourselves visible to the outside world and if somebody wants to follow us in our virtual world can do it quite effortlessly.