Once again, I continue to learn so much about technology and the information it can provide us. In going through each one of these activities, I’ve learned about a multitude of items that I had no idea even existed. This exercise is a perfect example. I have used Mozzilla’s Firefox web browser before, but have never heard of Lightbeam. To be completely transparent, I had no idea that third party websites could be tracking my web browsing activity, let alone keeping personal information stored. It was fascinating to see Lightbeam in action, with the dynamic graph mode setting, and all the different live connections it was recording/showing.

My results from the activity were eye opening. The most tracked website was ‘The Province’ Newspaper, which had over 96 third party website trackers. The second, was ‘Save on Foods’ at 51. A total of over 215 third party trackers from 7 of the top websites that I regularly browse were identified, and most of them were from seemingly completely random sites like ‘a.wishabi.com’ or ‘se.monetate.net’, along with numerous other addresses from sites that I have never even visited. This to me, is quite unsettling.

This exercise showed just how much your privacy on the web can be compromised, unless you are using secure networks, strict privacy settings, or specific apps to safeguard your activity and information. Moving forward this new technical awareness has, without a doubt, altered how I share and search for information on the web. It will stay with me as reminder to always use privacy setting when they are avaiblible.

Daneen