Beware! You are being tracked!
Privacy and Do Not Disturb are expressions virtually without meaning on the web today and I am sick of the shenanigans that go on every time I visit various web sites.
Are you sick and tired of being bombarded with advertisements for pressure cookers just because you once searched for some on a popular shopping site; tired of your favourite bank trying to sell you financial services while you are looking for your next holiday destination in China; or having to survive a wave of advertisements for detergents, makeup, shoes or bird cages or whatever?
I have written about this before: it’s called web tracking. By now, only the most naïve PC users don’t know that online marketers track where we go, using that information to inundate us with targeted advertising.
The extent of that tracking is not as well known. For example, simply viewing a particular website without even clicking any links can give marketers and others a surprising amount of your detailed and possibly deeply personal information. When you load a new webpage, the online server for that page will know, at a minimum, your IP address, the date and time the page was requested, and the webpage you were on when you made the request for the new page. But those who run web servers can and do gather and share much more. And, indeed, they do since it drives a lucrative business.
Visit Facebook, Google, or any other site, and your personal information is not retained just by that specific organisation. Data points collected about you and your browsing habits are often shared with numerous third parties, meaning other domains, for targeted advertising. Much of this information can, and usually does come from your own PC. When you download a webpage, you often get numerous cookies. Some of them are tracking cookies or other types of cookies that contain activity-tracking code. Keep in mind that not all web cookies are bad. General cookies typically store information that will make it faster and easier to visit a site you like or an often used site such as your bank. A serious catch here is that this information could, however, include passwords and credit-card numbers.
Tracking code, whether in a separate cookie or embedded in other cookies, Flash code, or JavaScript, is typically loaded along with the ads displayed on a webpage. Tracking cookies are downloaded, even though you haven’t clicked an ad. Moreover, most cookie activity is hidden from website visitors.
In the good old days cookies would usually limit themselves to where, when, and what you clicked. Today sophisticated web trackers can match your computer’s identity, that is what your IP address is, with your browsing history and other activities online and send it to various online services that deliver ads to web pages. Online ads rarely come from the same web domain that is providing the content you actually wanted to see. That sharing of user identity and activity lets ads follow you around the Internet.
The most serious culprits in this game are social network sites.
Your information can also be matched with other data collected about you, such as personal information you provided on these social networking sites. Simply, if you sign in to Facebook and then move on to browse a few other websites, you will probably leave a trail of information accessible to a variety of parties who may be advertisers or even unscrupulous individuals who want to steal your identity. It can get worse if you have allowed software or websites to use your location information. Get directions on Google Maps, and the service knows where you are and where you’re going. It can even track how you got there.
Modern web browsers typically give you some control over cookies, settings that can be selected in the various option screens. The catch is of course that some cookies are desirable and many websites require a cookie to be active while you’re on the site, so it is impractical to simply block them all. Browsers do not offer options to control which cookies are acceptable. That task is left to a variety of add-ons or plug-ins. Add-ons that help browsers block web trackers are such products as DoNotTrackMe, Disconnect and Ghostery.
I have written about Ghostery before and indeed used it for quite a long time now with very good results.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which strives to protect privacy at various levels, has released a program called Privacy Badger. Despite the fact that it is still in beta it appears to be stable and fully functional and worth writing about.
EFF’s new tool differs from other tracking blockers in a number of fundamental ways. First, it does not simply look for signs of personal data going to a specific list of tracking domains and then block that activity. Instead Privacy Badger keeps track of all content downloaded for a specific page. It then checks whether cookies, beacons, scripts, ads, or some other sources continue tracking you as you move to other sites. If it detects that activity, it then blocks the tracking source.
Simplicity always appeals to me and Privacy Badger is simple and does not requires any configuration. Best of all, Privacy Badger provides a sense of security since it is offered by EFF which is a highly respected non-profit organisation dedicated to defending civil liberties in this digital world. It is this high level of trust which provides the most comfort.
Currently this ad on only works with Fitrefox and Chrome. The developers assure us that Internet Explorer and Safari are on the way. That has little impact on me as I rarely use that software unless testing a website design.
To describe its method of operation is too lengthy for inclusion here but having used it for a little while now I am satisfied that it is a valuable tool. Like all software it has its own idiosyncrasies that become clear after playing with it.
Install the Lightbeam add-on for Firefox and/or Chrome if you are curious about just how wide the third party tracking net is. As you visit websites, Lightbeam notes the places you have visited and graphically displays all the many third-party domains those sites are connected to.
This may put you off using the web for ever. I connected to eBay and the Courier Mail sites and discovered through Lighthouse that 17 third party trackers were following me!
