Here’s Everything Internet Trackers Know About You
Every time we log in online, there’s someone watching on the other side. By this point, we are aware of that and some users have come to accept it. We know that websites tend to track our data, however, we might not know to what extent.
Nobody’s really telling us how much of our data is being shared across the web and we don’t really notice it while it’s happening. That’s why a team of privacy researches decided to do an experiment to find out the answer by analyzing the digital activity of a reporter from the New York Times with his consent.
The experiment consisted of installing a special version of the Firefox browser that allowed researchers to monitor how exactly are websites tracking the data of a user on a regular basis. The reporter used it during his typical browsing routine and then uploaded the data to his fellow privacy researchers.
Let’s take a look at the results!
They’re Tracking More Than Meets The Eye
The results confirmed that there’s a huge amount of information about our Internet activity getting tracked in extensive detail. The reporter had visited 47 websites like Google, YouTube, Twitter, and numerous news sites while working on an article. But, as soon as he logged in, a lot of ad-trackers were able to identify his IP address and follow him from page to page to learn his behavior.
After browsing online for just a few hours, there were already trackers that had figured out his exact location without much trouble.
“This tracker for Advertising.com received my almost exact location as latitude and longitude — about a quarter mile off from my actual location. Several other trackers gathered information about where I was, including my city, state, country and zip code. They base this off my IP address, so I had no chance to opt-out.” (Farhad Manjoo, New York Times)
Trackers use this information to spread targeted advertisements according to a users’ location, interests, and activities. Which means that keeping our privacy is almost impossible if we attempt to browse freely across the web.
How Do They Track Our Activity?
Advertising companies have developed the necessary technology to make tracking possible. They assign a unique identifier number to every user and store it in the browser for other trackers that will be able to figure out your activity based on this connection.
Besides that, they can also use signals from the users’ computer to guess their identity. Some trackers from the experiment could even recognize the screen size and resolution from the reporter’s computer. Why would they even need to know that?
Another discovery from the study was that Google or Facebook’s own domains don’t contain as many trackers as expected. But there’s a reason for that and it’s pretty concerning. They are placing most of their trackers on other websites that have nothing to do with them.
“Google was present on every site I visited, collecting information on where I live, the device I used and everything I looked at.” (Farhad Manjoo, New York Times)
As you can see, you’re being followed by hundreds of trackers every hour of every day, which compromises your privacy rights. They have access to your browsing activity, your exact location, even the characteristics of your computer screen, but everything happens behind our back.
What Can We Do?
Now that you know exactly what trackers are doing with your data, don’t you want to do something about it? Luckily, you can. Our team at Online.io has developed a solution to fight back against trackers, ads and malware; all within the same browser extension.
Give our demo a try!
Google Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/onlineio-cyber-security-p/pkhboldlpfikllgljcmijlpcgonkojhn
Mozilla Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/es/firefox/addon/online-io-cybersecurity/
It’s time to claim back your privacy!
