Mozilla Releases Tool That Shows Who Is Tracking Your Online Activity

by Terry Wilson
Canadian Awareness Network
October 28, 2013

Mozilla has released a free add on called Lightbeam. The add on allows users to view a real time chart of any tracking information being added to your computer in the form of cookies.

The chart gives users a clear view of all third party tracking cookies that are used for targeted advertising, among many other uses.

Mark Surman, Mozilla’s executive director, shas stated: “It’s a stake in the ground in terms of letting people know the ways they are being tracked. At Mozilla, we believe everyone should be in control of their user data and privacy and we want people to make informed decisions about their Web experience.”

Here is the about section from the Lightbeam webpage:

About this Add-on
Using interactive visualizations, Lightbeam enables you to see the first and third party sites you interact with on the Web. As you browse, Lightbeam reveals the full depth of the Web today, including parts that are not transparent to the average user. Using three distinct interactive graphic representations — Graph, Clock and List — Lightbeam enables you to examine individual third parties over time and space, identify where they connect to your online activity and provides ways for you to engage with this unique view of the Web.

How Lightbeam Works
When you activate Lightbeam and visit a website, sometimes called the first party, the add-on creates a real time visualization of all the third parties that are active on that page. The default visualization is called the Graph view. As you then browse to a second site, the add-on highlights the third parties that are also active there and shows which third parties have seen you at both sites. The visualization grows with every site you visit and every request made from your browser. In addition to the Graph view, you can also see your data in a Clock view to examine connections over a 24-hour period or in a List view to drill down into individual sites.

How You Can Use Lightbeam to Help Us Illuminate the Inner Workings of the Web
As a part of Lightbeam, we’re creating a big-picture view of how tracking works on the Internet, and how third-party sites are connected to multiple other sites. You may contribute your data to our crowdsourced directory by simply turning on the share switch within the add-on. To disable crowdsourcing, you can turn it off at any time. You can view your local data stored within Lightbeam at any time, or save your data by clicking the “Save” button under the data section on the left side of the add-on.
addons.mozilla.org

Lightbeam as it stands if only for desktop browsers and Apple has rejected from its apps store, by developers which incorporate “cookie tracking” technology.

After the Snowden revelations this looks to be a good first step towards online privacy!