"We have said this is the wrong thing to do – for a while those roads will befree of congestion but eventually they will be full of cars.
Polaris has been running the NHTRC hotline since December 2007, and the BeFree Textline since March 2013.
Later this year, when BeFree tracks user activity across multiple sites, it will disclose the user's information from all the sites on one page.
To authenticate the identity of the user who asks for his online dossier, BeFree checks the user's cookie number, then retrieves only the browsing and purchasing information associated with that cookie.
One such company is BeFree, which, among other things, distributes software that helps online businesses tailor their content to the user's interest.
Notably, BeFree does not have full control over how that information is displayed.
As with other companies that track user activities, BeFree inserts a "cookie," or a number within a small text file, on the user's hard drive, to track activity.
Like BeFree, ECustomers plans to allow consumers to have access to the data it compiles on them, by mailing a log-in number and password.
For instance, on SuperGo.com, a bicycle store, users can click on a link within the site's privacy statement and go to another site set up by BeFree, which then discloses information compiled about the user's behavior on SuperGo.
Executives of other companies facing the same access questions said the BeFree approach was flawed.
Daniel J. Jaye, co-founder of Engage, an online advertising company that tracks consumers anonymously, said BeFree "may be well-intentioned, but it could lead to a security breach".
