Economic Predictions Using Web Usage Data

Makarand writes "The Chicago Tribune has an article on the claims of ComScore Networks Inc., that it can predict major economic trends by tracking the online activity of 1.5 Million people. The company gains access to people's Internet travelogues by giving them free security software and programs that speed up their connections. Economists say that the company's models need to be tested over several years before they can be considered accurate."

Comments

Spyware

[krnlpanic]

"The company gains access to people's Internet travelogues by giving them free security software and programs that speed up their connections."

I always thought that anyone who provides programs to "Speed up your internet connection" were crooked and could not be trusted. Spyware at its finest. As far as this company providing "security software"...I won't even go there.

Sound like spyware to me.

[giel]

Tracking the behaviour of 1.5 million people. And all these people are aware they are being tracked? And they did agree?
I can't believe it...

PS. Watch out! You computer has an IP address...

security company?

[twitter]

I suppose having your every move on the web tracked and monitored by some comercial company over windows is considered secure by some. Next time these folks want security and a faster connection software, might I recomend:

• Debian
  
• Red Hat
  
• OpenBSD
  

This would make the world a better place, even if it could not be used to forcast the next great depresion.

Income-bracket/age-range skewed?

[mccalli]

I would imagine this data is skewed towards the mid and high-end income brackets, and also away from the older age brackets.

Given that the equipment you need to access the web is still fairly pricy, and also that the majority of people accessing it are still relatively young, I'd question the ability of this model to extrapolate to the wider world.

Cheers,
Ian

Re:Income-bracket/age-range skewed?

[actiondan]

I would imagine this data is skewed towards the mid and high-end income brackets, and also away from the older age brackets.

Also, the sample will only include people stupid enough to download their spyware and let it report back on everything they do online.

representative group?

[John_Renne]

I don't think the group theý're tracking will be very representative. Allthough there is a large group of people is using the Internet there's no way global trends can be predicted by their behaviour. There is a world out there that's hardly connected (some call it Africa) that has some influence on our world's economy but is left out completely.

Maybe the researchers should see the world is bigger than the US

What About Credit/Debit Card Co's Right Now

[jck2000]

Does anyone know what Amex, Discover, Visa, MasterCard, etc. are doing currently with the data they accumulate? I am not suggesting anything nefarious, rather I think these institutions, by having much larger (and probably more representative) sample sizes, would be able to accomplish much more than this smaller company would.

Re:Registration required Complimentry copy below

[mr_z_beeblebrox]

My own thought on this (my fiance is a biologist and we do a lot of 'those' stats, that is my only qualification) is that internet users are a subset of the people who make up the economy. As more research goes into this they will find that trends indicated by internet usage will have a relationship with actual trends of the 'whole picture' and will later develop the internet /society ratio as a valid indicator. However, until they have this backlog of data to compare it to it will not remain valid.

They could of course mine the net for data on past years and produce 'predictions' for those years to compare with actual data on those years and deduce the ratio from there.

Re:Spyware at its finest

[tmark]

Why should it be illegal if the users have agreed to a valid disclaimer ?