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Gary Kovacs: Tracking our online trackers

As you surf the Web, information is being collected about you. Web tracking is not 100% evil — personal data can make your browsing more efficient; cookies can help your favorite websites stay in business. But, says Gary Kovacs, it’s your right to know what data is being collected about you. He unveils a Firefox add-on, Collusion, to do just that. (Update: Collusion is now called Lightbeam.)

Do Not Track – Does It Work?

The last time we wrote about the browser technology known as Do Not Track – over four years ago! – the online privacy space was much simpler. The hope was that DNT, once it was ‘baked in’ to every major browser, would enable internet users to turn off invasive tracking quickly and easily.

But that hasn’t happened. Why not?

The Future of Privacy

The terms of citizenship and social life are rapidly changing in the digital age. No issue highlights this any better than privacy, always a fluid and context-situated concept and more so now as the boundary between being private and being public is shifting. “We have seen the emergence of publicy as the default modality, with privacy declining,” wrote Stowe Boyd, the lead researcher for GigaOm Research in his response in this study. “In order to ‘exist’ online, you have to publish things to be shared, and that has to be done in open, public spaces.” If not, people have a lesser chance to enrich friendships, find or grow communities, learn new things, and act as economic agents online.

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