Can you avoid being tracked?

It’s difficult. But you can find more and more tools that help you know who is tracking you. We suggest you embrace a new “online hygiene” and follow our simple steps. So below a few rules, softwares and websites that will help you track the trackers:

  • Lightbeam  is a plug-in for Firefox developped by Mozilla. It allows you to see who is tracking you across the sites you browse. Cookies, third parties, links between trackers, Lightbeam gives you an overview… if you surf with Firefox.
  • Ghostery is an american company that allows you to blog web snitches. Available for all browsers, ghostery keeps a very large database of trackers and allows you to select those you wish to block. They also consult for companies who wish to improve their marketing practices. Click here to download the extension.
  • In France, the Commission Nationale Informatique et Liberté (CNIL, National Commission on Informatics and Liberty) developped Cookieviz, that identifies in real time cookies who send information to other sites. Alongside l’Expérience, this is a part of their actions to increase user awareness about cookies and privacy.
  • Disconnect.me was founded by former Google employees and lawyers. It allows, among other, to block trackers and improve your navigation on the web. Available in English, this plug-in categorizes trackers (advertising, site use,…). This is the software that is used in real time in some of the episodes of Do Not Track.

Tactical Technology Collective is an organization that works on the use of information et offers a wide array of websites to analyze and reduce the tracks we leave behind while surfing. Their toolbox is pretty extensive – we particularly emphasize My Shadow (available in several languages) that allows you to find the tracks you leave on the Internet with your devices. From the same company, Trackography is a website that allows you to know which trackers are used by the media sites you visit, depending on your country. Unfortunately, it doesn’t feature every site. Check out other articles about tools on our blog.