Who has your data? The final stretch…

A March 2012 news article by The Telegraph (www.telegraph.co.uk) revealed that Twitter and Path acknowledged copying entire address books from their users' smartphones without the users' consent or knowledge. Add that to retailers tracking you by your mobile device, app developers collecting your personal information, your cell phone provider and their software providers collecting your call and text information, law enforcement agencies mapping where you go, and a comprehensive picture of who you are, what you do, what you own, and where you go begins to emerge.

Let's go back to the persistent cookies, both friendly and malicious. They have been busy collecting information about you while you surf the Web, Internet bank, and shop online. The bad guys who planted the malicious cookies on your machine have already sold your information, probably several times, for a small amount each time. But there is another market, a legal one, which also trades in...