Online privacy and building reputations

A Q&A with Joseph Turow, a professor of communications at the University of Pennsylvania and an expert in online privacy.

He thinks Internet users are woefully unaware of what information is being collected about them and how marketers are using that data. Worse, Turow told Senate lawmakers those advertisers and Web sites may be wrong in their assumptions about users. The consequences go beyond poorly placed ads, he said. Our reputations are at stake, and users don't have enough say to control how we're being viewed online, he said.