Do you know what happens when you browse the internet?
Empowering the public to reclaim their data
Have you ever encountered an ad for something you just saw while shopping? Is a site’s “recommended for you” section a bit too accurate?
Tech companies are in the business of selling your business. Facebook knows when you are lonely, where your kids go to school, your fears, and everything in between. Advertisers and advertisement hosts like Facebook and Google collect anything they can about you in order to target their ads and increase the odds of you buying their products. While targeted ads may sound nice, your interests and these companies’ interests don’t always align. Gone are the days where businesses ask you what you want to purchase. Because each time you see a targeted ad, these companies have made that decision for you.
How can you learn about what companies know about you on the internet?
Introducing DecodeMe. DecodeMe educates people about these devious practices of data collection and empowers them to reclaim their data. Our mission at DecodeMe is to uncover the mystery behind why big technology companies monitor your every action online, how these practices are hurting you, and what you can do to protect yourself and your communities.
Our website provides personalized visualizations of people’s Facebook and Google data. See what data they have on you!
Wanna see how your data is tracked in real-time? Download our Chrome extension and check out what pesky cookies and network requests are happening behind the scenes. If you don’t know what cookies are, here’s a great summary by Vox!
DecodeMe is inspired by the Netflix docu-drama The Social Dilemma, which discusses the dangers and metastasis of surveillance capitalism. Big tech companies are everywhere, even when you’re not on their sites. As you browse the internet, companies like Facebook and Google, leverage their vast network of online trackers to learn about your interests. Features such as the like button allow Facebook to see which sites you visit and when you visit them, even if you’re not logged into Facebook. These companies run their collected data through massive predictive models, and then sell predictions of your behavior.
The push to collect the most data to create the best model has led to biased predictions and the negligence of how these models work only reinforces the inherent racism in our society. Dr. Ruha Benjamin warns us of the inequities new technologies reproduce, saying it is a slippery slope between “effective marketing and efficient racism.”
Well–what can I do about this?
The DecodeMe website offers a brief look at how our actions online are being monitored and guided to best serve the interests of the biggest technology companies in the world. We compiled information from dozens of sources to best introduce you to the data collection practices that we find most harmful, and we highlight steps that we can all take to protect our data and ourselves in the future.
Educational Content
We know that internet safety isn’t the most interesting topic in the world. That’s why we tried to weave together a bright narrative with lovable characters to make learning about this topic a lot more fun. As you learn about data collection, you’ll meet Snips, our monster mascot, and see how his simple search led to more than just what he saw on his computer screen. Take a few moments to explore our learning page to find out what the fuss is all about.
Our educational content is just the beginning. We also provide more resources to learn the finer intricacies of data collection
The visualization tool
We also built an online visualization tool to help you see what type of information you have given up to these companies. With the rise of new data privacy and protection legislation, we can now take back our data collected by companies like Facebook and Google. Our visualization tool is there to decode all of that data and make it easier for you to understand.
You might know that you can download the data that companies such as Facebook and Google keep about you. While companies will give you the data, that doesn’t always mean they make it easy to read. Even after downloading your data, it can be difficult to try and interpret what exactly you’re looking at. Our visualization tool is made to help you explore your own data without having to comb through pages and pages of JSON files. We visualize some of the more interesting data in your file for you in convenient charts and graphs.
However, we understand why you might be worried about uploading your data to our site after reading about how your data is sold. That’s why the entire process happens on your computer. Even though our visualization tool exists on the web, your files are never sent over the internet to any servers. This means that it might take a few seconds longer to get your visualizations, but you can be confident that your data is staying with you.
If you don’t know how to download your data, don’t worry. We have guides to download both your Facebook and Google data. Don’t want to upload your data, but still see what data these sites store? We have example data for you to explore all of our visualizations.
The Chrome extension
How is data collected as you browse the internet? We created a Google Chrome Extension that helps you see how your online browsing is being tracked in real time. The extension identifies cookies that sites create on your browser and deciphers some of the data that is being sent from your browser back to different companies’ servers.
The Chrome extension uncovers two key methods of data collection: cookies and network requests:
- Cookies: The extension looks at where your cookies come from and how much they can communicate with the sites you visit
- Network requests: Going to a website means more than going to one URL. That site might call for data from multiple other URLs, track analytics, or load images
Just like the website, your data stays with you. The Chrome extension is not connected to an API or server, so your data is secure while using our Chrome extension.
What’s Next?
DecodeMe is committed to empowering people to take control of their data which requires the regulation of tech companies. Our website and chrome extension encourage people to recognize the dangers of surveillance and challenge data disenfranchisement. Through our future endeavors, we will continue to advocate for the regulation of tech companies and surveillance, community review boards, algorithm audits, and diversity in tech.
How we made it
We made DecodeMe’s site using the MERN (Mongo, Express, React, Node) web development stack. We leveraged the rebass.js component library and theme-ui to style our site. Our graphs are built using billboard.js and the react-billboard component, a wrapper on the popular d3.js visualization package.
The Chrome extension is built on top of a React frontend. We use Chrome’s cookies and webrequest APIs to collect data, then present it using lists and visualizations built using billboard.js
Check us out!
Website
Visualization Tool
Chrome Extension
DecodeMe was designed and developed by six Dartmouth Computer Science majors, all with an interest in using technology for social impact: Marina Cepeda, Charlie Nee, Thanh Nguyen Jr, Joseph Notis, Les Ogbuagu, Will Sanford. Learn more about the team here!
