The stealth marketing underworld is starting to surface above ground.

Witness this New York Times Magazine piece by George Washington University law professor Jeffrey Rosen:

Who Do Online Advertisers Think You Are?

Not long ago, I decided to test how much privacy I have online. I cleared the cookies, the bits of code that Web sites leave on my computer to track what I browse and buy, from my two Internet browsers, Safari and Firefox. Then, with my digital past superficially erased, I set out to create two new identities: Democratic Jeff and Republican Jeff.

Safari became the home of Democratic Jeff. I started by spending time on Barack Obama’s re-election Web site and then visited some travel, car and shopping sites to search for flights to Los Angeles, Volvos and Birkenstocks. On Firefox, as Republican Jeff, I went to Mitt Romney’s site and then searched for Cadillacs, flights to Hawaii and diamond rings.

Sufficiently self-profiled, Rosen then returned to his usual webitude . . .

Read the rest at Sneak Adtack.