Firefox Plug-In Shows Who Is Tracking You
Cookies placed on someone's computer by a Web advertiser may well be beneficial from a business perspective. However, with many of these same companies potentially working with the National Security Agency, Internet users are concerned about their browsing habits being released to a government agency.
The plug-in is called
Lightbeam and for a taste of it, here's the link to a TED Talk:
http://www.ted.com/... (It's set for autoplay so I'll won't embed.)
Jump over the break for more discussion.
This plug-in returns control of your computer to you. I like that. Not only will it show the third party tracking cookie for each site you visit, it allows you to block those connections in the future. Therefore, your can tailor the app for your usual sites and block everything that doesn't break the sites.
The data can be displayed as a graph, a list, or a clock face giving the time of the connections.
For any example, when I visit dailykos-dot-com, I'm unwittingly connecting to youtube, google, facebook, and libsyn. Facebook will additionally connect to fbcdn-dot-net. You can block all those extraneous connections and their tracking with no noticeable effect on browsing.
Site owners, including Markos, may not appreciate such actions. We'll see how that plays out. It might lead to interesting discussions. One of the advantages of subscribing to this site is the absence of ads. I was surprised to find I'm still getting all the tracking cookies.
In the TED Talk above, Gary Kovacs uses his 9 year old daughter to make his point. If someone was following your 9 year old daughter with a camera and a notepad, you might be inclined to do something about it. So would I.
Recommended.
Take back your computer.