Is Upromise Selling Your Information?

Did you ever wonder if you're saving enough money for your kids' college education? Maybe you have a rich relative who had already fully funded college for your offspring and you don't have to worry about that. But most of us must create a savings plan for our children's higher education goals.

When the Upromise program was launched in 2001, it was revolutionary in that no other company was giving free money to consumers just for shopping. By partnering with some of America's largest consumer products companies, Upromise allows families to earn back a certain percentage of their spending with a Upromise account.

Of course you already know that you can obtain a Upromise sponsored credit card and submit your grocery and drug store rewards cards to keep track of your spending and earn a percentage back from the purchase of participating products. Another way to earn money is to install a Upromise Toolbar onto your computer and allow Upromise to keep track of your web surfing activity.

Installing a web activity tracking toolbar onto your computer is a highly debatable way of making money. You are essentially giving Upromise the right to access and sell your internet preferences and surfing history to other companies. The site states that members who install the toolbar save an average of five times more than other members. But is it really worth it?

If you start shopping online at a Upromise partner and forget to enter the shopping site from the Upromise site, the toolbar will remember and give you the credit for shopping there. The toolbar also has a search box to look for Upromise shopping partners, it has a tab which shows your current account balance, and it shows a "specials" button which will flash red when the partner page you are currently visiting is offering additional savings.

The part of the toolbar program that compromises your privacy is that when you agree to install the toolbar, you are also agreeing to allow Upromise to collect data about you using a technology called "Click Stream Data". Click Stream Data is anonymous but includes information such as your IP address URL's of websites which you have viewed and the date you viewed these sites.

According to Upromise, it's possible that the Click Stream Data capturing will inadvertently include some of your personal data. However, the personal data is not supposed to be stored by Click Stream Data (Click Stream Data has a contractual agreement with Upromise concerning personal data).

Click Stream Data also collects your web surfing information and uses it to create personalized offers. On the Upromise site, it doesn't say how the personalized offers are sent to you (most likely through email).

Is it worth selling your privacy to make a few extra cents here and there with the Upromise Toolbar? I personally would not do it. I'm also concerned how easy or difficult it is to uninstall the toolbar if you change your mind. I will address that in another article.