Just about every action you do online is being tracked and cataloged. There are scripts running on every web page, and many harmlessly add a little flair to the site. They make pictures zoom in for dramatic effect or they make the colors fade or transition as you move to the next section. Some, however, are there solely to watch you. They track your mouse movements, follow links you click, and even gather information about your computer and browser to continue tracking you when you have left that website. Why would anyone want this information? This might sound a bit like a conspiracy theory, but stay with me:
You are a commodity being bought and sold.
The information that all of those trackers and scripts collect is used to build a profile of you, the Consumer. They record the things you like, the things you don’t like, your political views, who your friends are, your work information, how you feel about your work, how many emails you use, how long you look at a picture… and it’s all being cataloged by companies you have never heard of.
Everyone knows about the big ones. Google and Facebook trackers are built into just about every web page that uses their easy “login” or “save” buttons. But who has heard about FullStory, LogRocket, Comscore, or Yandex? Many sites have plugins with trackers from these companies installed on them. With these trackers installed, the website owners receive data about how many users visit them, how long people stay on their site (called the “bounce rate”), which articles are the most popular, and other similar metrics. All of this information helps content creators, UIX designers, and everyone else in web development departments do their jobs better.
At the same time, though, the tracking companies get to harvest the data and correlate a user’s information with other sites where their trackers have been installed on. They sell this packaged data about any given user or group of users to ad companies, which then use the data to target their ads according to each user’s history and behavior. Ever wonder how you end up seeing an ad for an item on one site when you were looking at something similar on another? Well, it’s the trackers.
But wait, there’s hope! (Kind of.)
There is “tinfoil” that will actually work to help hide your activity from these companies. All of the information they gather comes from browsing habits, and the primary tool for getting around the web is, well… a browser. The most common browsers – Chrome, IE and Firefox – allow extensions to add additional functionality into the browser. Not all browsers are created equal (and I could write an entire article on just that), but I’ll leave you with this bit of wisdom for your browser choices: follow the money. Mozilla Firefox is the only browser without serious skin in the advertising game. Sure, you can install the blockers on other browsers, but their effectiveness can often be compromised. It’s also imperative to vet the makers of all extensions, they can also be used to gather the very data you are trying to protect.
So, which extensions should you use, and why should you trust them? The quick answer is you can’t really trust anyone, but there are a few developers out there who share the same philosophy of an internet free from this type of behavior. Personally, I use Firefox, with Ghostery, AdblockPlus, and uMatrix. I also have a content filter running on my home network that is set to block ad pages. To monitor these, I set up Fiddler, which is a desktop proxy that connects to your browser and shows all the traffic being sent and received. You can personally make sure there are no strange requests being sent out.
If you want to go even further, randomizing your browser information is required. Something like Chameleon will randomize which browser you appear to be using on a website. If that isn’t enough to keep you hidden, then maybe you shouldn’t be on the internet.
What about using a VPN or Privacy modes?
VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) are great for masking your source location, but if you don’t have the trackers effectively blocked, they will still record your activities. Remember, they’re looking at your behavior, where you go on the internet, what you look at, or how long it takes you to read an article. They don’t necessarily care where you live, as long as they can get targeted advertisements to you. Yeah, some ads are based on location, but those tend to be more related to smaller local businesses.
Privacy mode is really just a setting that keeps your browser from saving where you go. If you don’t want the significant other to know about that gift you’ve been scoping out for them, go into Privacy mode and it won’t save the cookies or sites in history. It can be useful, sure, but it wasn’t designed to hide you from the sites you are going to.
Will these you ever be able to completely protect yourself from the ever-growing eye of the data collection industry? In all honesty, no, not completely. The ubiquity of tracking technologies are everywhere from websites to mobile apps and more, but taking what measures you can will help make your footprint smaller and a little harder to trace. The way I figure it, if someone wants to target an ad at me, they need to work really hard at it, because I’m not going to make it easy.
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