SARASOTA - Alone on your computer does not make you anonymous.

“Many times you share information, you don't even think you're sharing information,” says Sunita Lodwig. The professor of information technology at USF Sarasota-Manatee says she surfs carefully when she goes online and never clicks ads, perhaps with good reason.

A new study out of Stanford University makes that clear. Even companies that say they protect your information, do not.

This study focused on sites where you sign in to get content and the people who conducted it were able to track the trackers. Just one finding: If you tried to sign into the Wall Street Journal web site and got the password wrong, the site sent your email address to seven companies.

“The notion that this is somehow anonymous is just wrong,” says John M. Simpson, privacy project director at Consumer Watchdog. The nonpartisan, nonprofit is pushing for “do not track” legislation modeled on the “do not call” law.

“We have a poll that said that 80% of Americans support the concept,” says Simpson.

It may be popular, but would it be enforcible?

“That's going to be harder to do,” says USF Sarasota-Manatee marketing professor James Curran, “because most people are jumping blissfully from website to website.”

While many of us willingly share details about ourselves on sites like Facebook, the secretive nature of this kind of tracking has some people particularly disturbed.

“The fact that they don't know is going to be an issue,” says Curran.

“They can put together an awful lot of information based on what is being passed on to these other sites,” says Simpson.

Whether you know it or not.