There is no such thing as online privacy. No matter how many cookies we delete, no matter how numerous and diverse our passwords are, no matter how many privacy options we tick on social sites, there will always be advanced and accurate methods of profiling and tracking. There is also the growing popularity of location-based services such as Foursquare and Google Latitude that reveal your whereabouts to friends and brands alike. Add to this the decuman revenues that comes from online advertising, and you’ve got a complete picture of today’s consumer experience in the online market.

Service providers place their stake on privacy to promote their latest offers, such as Microsoft, which recently incorporated a Do Not Track header into the HTML5 proposal and afterwards into IE; and so did Mozilla into its new Firefox 4 browser. Microsoft states that it also removes IP addresses from Bing search query data after 6 months time.

Google, on the other hand, did away with ‘keep my opt outs’ capabilities of the Chrome browser, a not-so-efficient way of preventing online tracking. Google doesn’t trouble its head too much with privacy and this is proved by the latest fine the company received from French official for collecting unauthorized Wi-Fi data, this time through Google Latitude and not through Street View. The data collected over Wi-Fi networks, going under the name of payload data as well, consists of e-mail addresses, URLs and passwords.

Facebook introduced a new feature that allows users to access the site via HTTPS secure connection which online banking and shopping sites use to protect users’ data. Facebook has a history in using its users’ privacy as a combat tool in its battle with long time enemy Google.  Late last year, Google modified its API terms of services so as to prevent Facebook and others from using it to improve their friends’ database. Within the European Union at least, users have the possibility to request companies such as Google, Facebook, Microsoft etc to withdraw their information from their databases.

Europe has always been edgy when it comes to privacy matters and The New York Times reveals the nook of mobile companies that track their customers’ whereabouts. Whereas  the US the legislation is somewhat lax, in the EU, especially Germany, privacy is looked upon with care by everyone, from legislators, to judges and regular customers. Phone companies have been tracking their customers’ data and until now have been secretive regarding what kind and how much of information they have been collecting.

Just as mentioned at the beginning of this article, it really doesn’t matter how much users try to keep their private info concealed as the handlers of our information hold all the power. At the moment legislators are the only one who could make a change, such as the FTC, EU legislators or national/federal legal entities. Until then we are closely being watched.