You can collect information about someone based on what they make public on social media, including: creating a profile that includes personal information, tagging a location, or posting photos that capture personal details. However, data can also be collected without anyone knowing. Information is collected about store credit card holders every time they make a purchase. “Buried inside that card is a computer chip that records each item purchased along with a host of the buyer's personal information. This paper-based information allows marketing companies to target specific individuals because people's purchasing habits and other personal information are known” (Britz, 1996). There are some types of software that can be considered harmless, for example “Cookies are small text files with unique ID tags that are embedded in a web browser and saved to the user's hard drive” (Bidgoli, 2015). Another type of software that has no malicious intent is adware, which is simply a marketing tactic that collects data about Internet users to determine which advertisements to place in each user's web browser. Unfortunately, there are also types of software with malicious intent. One of these is spyware, which is a type of software that collects information about users, without their consent, while browsing