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.<\/p>\n
I reviewed some of the sites I usually visit: various collections of news stories (Google News, CBC News, AreWeLivingInTheLastDays), social media (Twitter),\u00a0 sports (Vancouver Canucks, Sherdog), and a variety of blogs (TheRebelution, Connected Principals, iTeach-and-iLearn, etc). What I found interesting is that the sports sights garnered the most trackers. The second highest number of trackers were attached to the news sites, regardless of which ones. I looked at a total of 9 sites and had 500 trackers.<\/p>\n
I also noticed that many of the trackers were from various servers and ad organizations. As I held my mouse over a number of them, I saw acronyms and short forms of web addresses that were completely unfamiliar to me. Obviously, I had no idea that there were THAT many companies that tracked my habits; I knew there were many, just not that many.<\/p>\n
However, as I thought about what the trackers signified, my mind turned to Scripture. I was reminded of the fact that God is tracking us in all that we do and that we will one day have to give an account for every word that we speak (Matt. 12:36) as well as every action we take (Rom. 14:12). However, He is also tracking us in terms of where we are (physically, spiritually, emotionally, socially, and intellectually) AND has promised that He will never leave us nor forsake us (Heb. 13:5). He has accepted us as we are, sinners, enemies of God, (Rom. 5:8) but He does not leave us like that (Phil. 1:6); He has planned that we grow and mature to become more like Christ (1 John 3:2). In my mind, this helps to settle me when I think about the information others might be gathering about me. If people are engaged in this activity, God has been engaged in it far longer, but with far more benevolent purposes.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":251,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5,22,63,7,1],"tags":[88,89,90],"class_list":["post-1397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-digital-literacy","category-flow","category-ma-lead-faculty","category-tracking","category-twu-online","tag-comfort","tag-fear","tag-presence","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s8GjXS-tracking","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/orientation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/orientation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/orientation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/orientation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/251"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/orientation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1397"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/orientation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1397\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1398,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/orientation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1397\/revisions\/1398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/orientation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/orientation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/orientation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}