Tracking me; tracking you

Tracking me; tracking you
This says it all

The last few months there has been much concern expressed about the extent to which software systems we use on the web are keeping track of what we are doing. And it is not limited to what we are doing on their site. They have also developed technology that will follow us around the web.

Michael Kassner wrote about one way to protect yourself without giving up on the internet experience. He reviewed the program Do Not Track Plus, which obviously is summarized as DNT+. DNT+ is a browser tool that blocks attempts at tracking as one browses. This is an image of the page he wrote and the display that you can get from DNT+ by clicking a button.

The post by Kassner is "Do Not Track Plus: A tool to protect your online privacy." It is posted to TechRepublic. He has his own firm, but apparently writes for TechRepublic frequently.

The top, right hand corner of the image shows the Do Not Track Plus display. Before you click it is a small dot at the top, right of the browser; when you click and it shows you how much tracking it has blocked on the current page and the total number of tracks blocked since you started using it. It says "on at www.techrepublic.com" it blocked 3 social buttons tracking you, 1 ad network tracking you, and 7 companies tracking you. This is tracking from the page that reports on the DNT+ program. Eleven blocks for a single page. Eleven blocks for a page that one might think would not want to invade the privacy of its readers.

And the big number is 11,616. In the time I have been using it with my Firefox browser it has executed that many blocks. I installed DNT+ on February 16. The image of the blog post and DNT+ report was captured on March 17. That is almost 12K tracks in a month. My DNT+ has been very busy.

Facebook accounts for 1,100+ of those blocks. The various Google sites, includng Gmail and Google Reader, were subjected to 743 blocks. They are major offenders from which one needs protection if you want privacy on the internet.

While searching around for other sites I checked my new favorite which is Gist. Gist is a contact manager that does a lot more than just hold lists. It searches for your contacts on the web so you can see tweets, public facebook status messages, blogs, etc. Wonderful program. And as heavily as I have used it in the last two weeks there were no social buttons blocked, no ad networks blocked, and only 1 company trying to track me blocked. Good grief, a system that protects my privacy without being forced. Wonder of wonders.

This is the url for Do Not Track Plus. It is much too ugly to reproduce other than as a link to the text.