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Tech to monitor cyber-surfers' activities developed in the United Kingdom

Even as India hotly debates the provisions of the new Information Technology Bill and its probable impact on business and pleasure on the Net, a new technology developed in the West makes it possible for governments to monitor the way we surf.

The ground-breaking system, which not only monitors the sites people are going to and how often, but also tracks who is visiting and how they've got there, was recently launched in the United Kingdom.

In fact, the company that developed the system in the UK claims that it will be able to measure over 90 per cent of the world's Internet audience in more than 30 countries by the end of next year.

The system, which is much similar to the panel-based research used by television audience measurement systems around the world although on a much larger scale, has been developed by Acnielsons E-ratings.com, which is 80 per cent owned by Acnielsons and has 20 per cent ownership by Netratings, a Silicon Valley company.

Netratings has developed an application, known as Insight, which allows the tracking the new system guarantees, The Independent, London reports.

Insight can be run on an everyday personal computer and tracks every click made by the user to gather a diverse selection of information which is then relayed back to the system's control centre in California via the Net.

Apart from monitoring which sites are visited, the system also gathers information on which advertisement (if any) has been viewed, and whether the surfer conducted a commercial transaction via the Web.

''It is a very powerful piece of propriety technology which we believe will make us the world leader in on-line traffic measurement'', says Bill Pulver, president of Acnielsens E-ratings.com.

Under the system, a selection of internet users has been recruited by the company to mirror the profile of the total number of surfers in each country. Each panelist is asked to instal the Insight software on their computer, and the programme tracks their surfing in real time.

Acnielsons E-ratings.com was launched last year in the US where 50,000 Internet surfers are now monitored daily, round-the-clock. The UK panel involves 9,000 people. The aim is to grow the survey worldwide, from the current level of 90,000 people in seven countries to 2,50,000 people in more than 30 countries by the end of 2001.

If it can meet this target, Acnielsens E-ratings.com will be able to provide information covering 90 per cent of world Internet use, Pulver claimed. Worldwide, this entails an investment of $ 50 million over two years.

According to Pulver, a number of other measurement techniques exist at present. However, while some are ''site centric''-logging hits and are unable to distinguish between people visiting a site for the first time and those who return many times, others have been unable to incorporate demographic details.

''It is possible for different visitors to a single Internet site to view different banner ads depending on whether they have visited the site before. Until now, it has not been possible for measurement systems to distinguish between these," Pulver says.

According to him the relevance of Insight is that currently, the vast majority of Web sites fall into one out of two models-advertising and promotional, or e-commerce. Advertising is already a major business with online advertising spend expected to total $ 24 billion by 2003 according to an estimate.

E-commerce, meanwhile is set for a major growth-estimates for its value in two years time range from a modest $ 1 trillion to $ 3 trillion.

''Both (advertising and e-commerce) require an understanding of demographics, and tracking of often common elements, including number of views and number of transactions. The only way to track both is from a panel perspective (which the new system provides)," Pulver says.

However, there is a saving grace for those netizens who value their privacy-the system is not yet able to distinguish between individuals' Net use for professional and personal use, at least not yet.

UNI

Business