WTF is cross-device tracking?
The mobile ad ecosystem is in “chaos,” and cross-device tracking aims to make sense of it. Here, we aim to make sense of cross-device tracking.
tracking
I Know Where Your Cat Lives
If you have posted a picture of your cat online, data analyst and artist Owen Mundy, and now, the rest of the world, knows where it lives. And, by that logic, he knows where you live, too.
Ads That Follow You Home: Has Tapad Cracked The Code Of Cross-Device Advertising?
Advertisers love Tapad because it can track and target you across your desktop, tablet and smartphone. Privacy advocates and Congress? Not so much.
The Clock Is Ticking For The Ad Cookie–With No Sure Alternative In Sight
Cookies are the basis for billions of dollars of online advertising. They’re also under fire from privacy advocates, the government, and even makers of Web browsers. But the key problem is the fragmentation of how people access online content (from phone to computer to tablet and back again).
And so the worries about how advertisers will be able to reach fragmented, increasingly privacy-aware audiences continue to consume the online ad business. Problem is, they haven’t yet come up with solutions–and the clock is ticking.
Panopticlick – A research project of the Electronic Frontier Foundation
How unique and trackable is your browser?
Is your browser configuration rare or unique? If so, web sites may be able to track you, even if you limit or disable cookies. “Fingerprinting” may prove a more robust tracking technology than cookies.
Panopticlick tests your browser to see how unique it is based on the information it will share with sites it visits.
The Web Cookie Is Dying. Here’s The Creepier Technology That Comes Next
Many Internet advertisers rely on cookies. The problem for marketers is that some users set their browsers to reject cookies or quickly extinguish them. And mobile phones, which are taking an increasing chunk of the Web usage, do not use cookies.
Advertisers and publishers are increasingly turning to something called fingerprinting. It allows a web site to look at the characteristics of a computer such as what plugins and software you have installed, the size of the screen, the time zone, fonts and other features of any particular machine. These form a unique signature just like random skin patterns on a finger.
Ghostery
Ghostery shows you the invisible web : cookies, tags, web bugs, pixels, beacons and companies interested in your activity. Then it helps you learn about those companies, so you can make informed decisions about what you are/aren’t willing to share, and control your online privacy.
After you’ve seen what’s tracking you, you can decide whether or not you want to block any or all of the companies in Ghostery’s library. Are there some marketers you trust, but others you’d rather turn away?
You, the World and I – Jon Rafman
“I don’t have one single photograph of her, even though we spent the better part of our youth together. She never let anyone take pictures of her. Now that she is gone. I wish more than ever I had some sort of records of our time together. A proof of our love. But I have none.
But it is not entirely true (…).”
Dragnet Nation – Julia Angwin
In this thought-provoking, highly accessible exploration of the issues around personal data-gathering, Julia Angwin provides a startling account of how we’re all being tracked, watched, studied, and sorted. Her own (often very funny) attempts to maintain her online privacy demonstrate the ubiquity of the dragnet—and the near impossibility of evading it. I’ll never use Google in the same way again.”
—Gretchen Rubin, bestselling author of Happier at Home and The Happiness Project
Can true Private Browsing ever be achieved?
Using your browser’s private browsing feature doesn’t provide as much privacy as you think. So, what really is your digital footprint?
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