Are companies buying your browsing history?

There are some things we think are between us and our computer - and no business of anyone else. If you want to spend a lazy afternoon watching funny cat videos or browsing through cake wrecks, then that's not something that anyone else needs to know about. So it may come as a shock that any company that wants to, may be able to by your browsing history for a small fraction of 1p.

Credit comparison site TotallyMoney.com surveyed 1,000 men to find out their views on how private they believe their internet browsing history, actually is. And over two thirds of them - 69% - had no idea that companies might be able to actually buy that browsing history.

Unsurprisingly, over half of all men - 55% - wouldn't consider sharing their personal data with a third party company.

When asked how much they thought their browsing history was worth, the average man put it at £1,056.64. Unfortunately for them, however, companies can get their hands on plenty of browsing histories for just 0.14p.

"It looks like men have little idea that their browsing history is so easily available to others," says Jo Gardiner from TotallyMoney.com. "And they would do well to educate themselves on their rights regarding third party companies."

Protect yourself

There are two common ways for your browsing history to be up for sale. The first is if your ISP provider collects the details and sells them on. A number of them do this - but not all of them do. It's worth digging out your contract to check whether they do. If it's all a bit impenetrable, then a call to customer services may either set your mind at rest or set alarm bells ringing.

If you use free anti-virus software from AVG, you are also agreeing to let it sell your browsing history onto third parties. It is clear that it does not sell private data, and a spokesperson said: "We are transparent about how and why we collect our user data, and the scenarios in which it is reasonable for us to share some of that data externally within our Privacy Policy. We do not sell or rent personal data of our users to third parties."

If any of your search terms or browsing history would identify you, then it treats that as private data, and would never share it. However it says: "We do reserve the right to share non-personal data which we collect." At the moment, interestingly, it doesn't actually share any of it.

But what do you think? Does it bother you, or does it seem harmless enough? Let us know in the comments.