Online shoppers bring to the hunt a lot of baggage from retailers

People who shop online share lots of information about themselves, even when they're not buying anything, said Jules Polonetsky, the former chief privacy officer at AOL who now heads the Future of Privacy Forum. "Simply visiting a Web site leads to an explosion of data to dozens of other companies," he said. "You (may) think you're shopping alone when you sit there at home, (but) you've got as many folks along with you as if you were in a crowd at the mall." Here are some of the things that Web sites can know about you when you land: Which search term you used to get there, what Web site you came from and other purchases you've made, whether you bought online or in a physical store. None of these things leads to identity theft or phishing, he said, because the data is anonymized so it can't be used to identify you personally. But it does mean that "companies are making decisions about what they show you all over the Internet." If you'd like to be more in control of what information you're sharing, the forum is offering help in honor of the holiday shopping season. One tip is to consider using different online services for e-mail and searching so your search history and your e-mail identity can't be linked.