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Often when consumers buy online, vendors take a snapshot of the customer's browsing data so they serve up contextual advertising based on user habits. A company called ROOT Markets thinks that information should be available to the customer as well.

ROOT Markets premiered ROOT /Vaults, an application to store, manage and share personal clickstream data, at O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference (ETech) last week. The company calls it an "attention banking service" aimed at providing a secure personal database for managing everything Web users browse online.

By opening a /Vault, Web users can maintain a record of their attention by analyzing their clickstream and choosing to share their data in an exchange with other users. The first /Vaults application will focus on clickstream with additional functionality to be added in the future.

"ROOT /Vaults is predicated on the belief that consumers own their data," said /ROOT Markets Founder and CEO Seth Goldstein. "With so many companies collecting copies of your data each time you buy a book online or query a search engine, consumers can protect themselves by owning a copy of their valuable data. /Vaults is an important first step in gaining user control and understanding the value of our attention."

Users can analyze their clickstream by the top visited sites, time spent online and trends including "gainers and losers." /Vaults also includes the capability to allow users to share and compare their data on a one-to-one basis with others they trust.

"The clickstream is one of the most important indicators of your attention, an expression of what makes you you," said Goldstein.

/Vaults utilize an open source recorder available through AttentionTrust.org to allow users to collect and send their data to their personal account.

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Jason L. Miller is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.