Monica Grace

"They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of His splendour"-Isaiah 61:3

Category: Digital Literacy

Tracking the Trackers

September 23, 2018 / / 0 Comments

This has been my favourite exercise so far, but it was pretty frightening to be honest!

I always knew sites were tracking my data, but did not know it was to this extent. Also didn’t know so much of it is without my permission and from sites I am not aware of. I did this exercise for about 15 minutes and the image above was what happened on the Firefox extension: Lightbeams. I went on some of my regular sites I browse: Facebook, eventbrite (mostly for work), instagram, spotify and youtube in that order. The following are some of my observations and comments on the process and findings:

  • Going on eventbrite to an event I’m managing for work, increased the trackers a lot! However, I was warned when I opened eventbrite though about cookies and asked if I will accept them. To people who don’t know what cookies are though, they might ignorantly accept them.
  • Surprisingly Instagram seemed to have a lot less trackers than I thought. However, if I had clicked on some “ads” or “promo” it probably would have gone up more.
  • Facebook, youtube and spotify’s trackers were pretty high as well.
  • Facebook’s amount of trackers did not surprise me.
  • Spotify and Youtube’s did suprise me, but when I thought about it more it makes sense. Spotify feeds you music based on your preferences. Youtube is similar, feeding you videos they think you’d like, based on what you usually watch.
  • I usually use Safari for normal browsing, but I couldn’t find how long they keep cookies for. I did find out that Safari allows you to block cookies if you change your settings in preferences. When this option is on, each time Safari gets content from a website, they place a request not to track you. This sounds good, but the trouble is, it’s an honours system. This means, it is up to the website to honour this request and that is pretty sketchy! I doubt many website heed this request, because as far as I know ethics in this field is still grey and there seems to be a lot of money in tracking.

 

Digital Literacy Musings

September 21, 2018 / / 0 Comments

1. Have you ever witnessed or experienced negative fallout for something you or someone else said online?

Personally, I haven’t experienced this. However, I’ve witnessed some posts on Facebook by some people who are politically passionate and have seen some awful comments and people “tearing them apart” in the comments section. Usually these people are purposely posting things that are provocative or divisive politically.

2. Have you ever witnessed or experienced the public shaming a person or organizations for something that they said online?

Well, we’ve seen a lot of this in the “me too” movement when it comes to sexual harrassment. Saw some online posts of churches and church leaders who were subject to scandale. Thinking specifically of a post I read about Bill Hybels and his church and how he was exposed. Another example I can think of is the celebrity, Bill Cosby and how all those allegations came out about him.

3. What strategies will you employ to ensure that you don’t become a participant or victim of the Internet Rage Machine?

I usually don’t post provoactive or political stuff, because I don’t want to “poke the bear” or comment on heated comment threads. I tend to be careful of my wording and review what I’m about to say several times or think of the consequences of posting this, example: what people might think of me or what this might imply. I think these things are wise, in order to not be a participant or victim of the rage machine.

It’s hard because being so aware of how the internet is a rage machine can make you very “self-concious” digitally of making sure you have some sense of “control” over the right image you want to portray. Realistically though, you cannot control what people are going to think of you, since sadly the online world allows for quick judgements without really understanding the person.

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