Trackers? More Plentiful Than Baloney Press Releases

December 22, 2022

You are absolutely correct if you think more Web sites are asking you to approve their cookie settings. More Web sites are tracking your personal information to send you targeted ads. Tech Radar explains more about trackers in, “You’re Not Wrong-Websites Have Way More Trackers Now.”

NordVPN discovered that the average Web site has forty-eight trackers and it is putting users at risk. NordVPN used three tracker blockers (Badger, Brave, and uBlock Origin) to count the number of trackers across the one hundred more popular Web sites in twenty-five countries. Social media platforms had the most trackers at 160, health Web sites were the second with forty-six, and digital media Web sites have twenty-eight. Ironically government and adult Web sites had the least amount of trackers.

Third parties were tied to the trackers. Thirty percent belonged to Google, 11% to Facebook, and Adobe had 7%. All data is used for marketing reasons. North and Central Europe had the least amount of trackers, because of privacy laws. The US is a tracker’s playground, because there are not any blanket laws that protect user privacy. It is an Orwellian system for capitalist purposes:

“For NordVPN, the problem with collecting this data is that it can be used to profile the users in great detail. The profile is then sold to advertising companies, whose ads “follow” the users around the internet to collect even more data.

Worse still, cybercriminals might get their hands on this data at any point, and could then use this data in phishing attacks that use a victim’s in-depth personal profile to appear authentic, making them more likely to fall for the ruse.”

The article doubles as a marketing tool for VPN services, particularly NordVPN. VPNs collect user information too, except they can hide it. Interesting how the article wants to inform people about the dangers of tracking and wants to sell a product too.

Whitney Grace, December 22, 2022

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Advertising, Analytics, News

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.