Firefox Add-On Collusion Shows Who’s Tracking You Online - kiddmembech

If you're concerned about advertisers trailing you across the Web, Mozilla can now help you interpret on the dot who's favourable you online with a new experimental Firefox add-on known as Collusion. The browser extension creates a real-sentence graph of all the tracking cookies being deposited on your browser as you move on around the Web.

The add-on can speciate between behavioral tracking (cookies that record links you detent on, what content you though, searches you make on a website, etc.) and other potency tracking cookies. Collusion's graph also makes it user-friendly to see which sites are using the same behavioral tracking advertisers. Collusion was to begin with developed as an independent imag by Mozilla engineer Atul Varma. Mozilla is now developing the lend-on with the support of the Ford Foundation.

Getting started

After you've installed Collusion from Mozilla's Firefox add-ons heading you have to enable it by clicking on Tools>Add-ons>Extensions and then click "Enable" next to Collusion. Afterwards that you should reckon a teensy red circle on the freighter right of your browser. Now, merely start out browsing the Web atomic number 3 you normally would. To hear the trailing graph build astir, click on the Collusion icon in the bottom right of your screen. This will candid a tell web browser tab with your Connivance graph.

The glowing circles represent sites you sustain visited and each line growing out of that circle is attached to a cooky the site operating room its advertisers bear placed on your browser. Red circles are behavioural trailing cookies, and gray circles represent non-behavorial tracking cookies. But, Mozilla says, those Asa Gray sites whitethorn still be tracking you across the Web. In my tests, the gray circles tended to be cookies from social networking sites such as Facebook, MSN, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Twitter. A visit to IMDb, however, deposited a non-behavorial tracking cookie from Amazon on my web browser.

After you've visited about four or five sites, the graph tends to get truly confusing and it's hard to tell which advertisers are affiliated with which sites. To cut down on the confusion fair-minded vibrate over any of the sites you've visited and Collusion will play up only the cookies connected therewith place.

You can also do the same for advertisers. If you wanted to see how many of the sites you visit rely on Google's DoubleClick for advertising, you could just hover ended the DoubleClick circle. In my subject, this shows me that almost all of the sites I previously visited during my short test relied on DoubleClick's cookie. This is cooperative information to know since, as Mozilla points proscribed, when the same sites rely on the same trailing cookies, advertisers are able to effectively track you across the sites you jaw building up priceless information for marketing research.

Mozilla says that all tracking information Connivance collects is stored topically on your electronic computer and never leaves your possession. You can reset the graphical record at whatsoever meter to delete Connivance's database. The add-on also features an export function, but in my tests this feature wasn't functioning properly.

Collusion can only show you who's tracking you reactionary now, but future plans for the add-on include the ability to turn off tracking cookies when you father't want to be followed as you browse the Web.

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