I hadn’t ever heard of trackers so this exercise was informative. I liked the visual graph that Lightbeam provides. I thought that only the website I visited kept data, not that third party websites also collected data! Overall, I visited 14 websites on my work computer since September 19, but in reality was tracked by …
After watching the TED talk that discussed the third party sites that track your information on the internet, I was interested to see what Lightbeam would show me. After opening Firefox and installing the add-on I visited 8 different websites. I browsed between the pages and clicked on a couple of videos. When I checked […]
This activity was enlightening! It was interesting to see that even though I don’t regularly use Firefox and only did a few minimal searches on it (while I continued the rest of my online activity through Google Chrome), there were […]
Ever since I took a technology course in my undergrad, I have been very careful about my privacy online so a few years ago I installed an add-on for Google Chrome called Disconnect. Disconnect also blocks and tracks tracking websites on every website that I visit. Similar to Lightbeam, I can hover over the icon …
As it relates to my browsing activities on the web, the assigned Track the Tracker exercise left me with a greater sense of empowerment; yet, at the same time, unease in terms of just how deep the rabbit hole of surveillance really goes. I tried a few common sites such as LuluLemon, Patagonia, Drudge Report, …
Online tracking is not a new concept to me. It is something I have been aware of for years. Lightbeam is rather interesting in terms of it telling me not only how many sites are tracking me but which sites… Continue Reading →
So far this has been very eye opening. I’ve had Lightbeam running for about 15 minutes and have visited a few of my favorite sites. I visited 9 sites and I connected with 50 third party sites. It seems like the sites with more connections were online shopping sites. Where as sites that I used …
Ouch. Scary. No, terrifying. Nerve-wracking. These would be some of the adjectives or phrases I would use when describing how I felt when I saw Lightbeam change with every website I visited. I reviewed some of the sites I usually visit: various collections of news stories (Google News, CBC News, AreWeLivingInTheLastDays), social media (Twitter), sports … Continue reading Tracking
3/22/18 – 11 Internet Visits, 70 Third Party Connections Today’s screenshot reports on 11 Internet visits although in fact I began my work for Finding U by searching with Edge, the Microsoft search engine. Only my visit to Firefox showed up, at the top of the screenshot. Interesting! This probably explains why Firefox reported on fewer visits yesterday than […]
Today’s screenshot reports on 11 Internet visits although in fact I began my work for Finding U by searching with […]