Ghostery – Know Who is Tracking You [Firefox Privacy]

What is Tracking Visitor Information

Tracking the visitor details is a common thing on modern day websites. Minute details of the visitors like IP, location, browser agents, visitor path etc. are recorded. They are mostly fused for getting more information about the visitors’ online behavior on the site and sometimes are also used for displaying advertisements based upon the tracking data.

There is nothing wrong in that, and it is the order of the today’s Internet.

How Visitor Tracking is Done?

There are special tracking services like Google Analytics, StatCounter etc., which provide tracking javascript codes to the webmasters, who can integrate these codes into the source code of the webpages. As soon as a visitor downloads a page from the server, the javascript code informs the tracking website about the details of the visitor, where they get recorded and neatly categorized to be presented in a meaningful manner to the owner of the website.

Is it Harmful for me as a visitor?

Generally, no. You have to accept that it is the order of today’s online world. However, if you are really concerned about your privacy issues do not really want to disclose slightest details about yourself, then yes, this tracking can reveal a lot of information about you.

Is There any Way to  Know who is Tracking me?

The best way to know the tracking services used by a webpage visited by you, is to just look into the source code of the page. It is nothing complex. Just hit Ctrl-U, if you are using Firefox, and take a hard look on the code. or other browsers also, there are similar ways to display the source code of the webpage. But it may be difficult for those who do not have slightest knowledge about the HTML codes in which these websites are programmed.

Ghostery – Firefox Addon to Track Who is Tracking You

For those people, there is a useful Firefox Addon, which does the dirty job for you. It takes a hard look on the source code and identifies the services, which are being used by the website for the tracking of their visitors. It gives the list of those services in the right upper corner of your webpage.

But, since most of the website use some sort of tracking, it soon will become very irritating for a common user. For them, the have provided an icon in the system tray. With a single click you can toggle Ghostery On and Off.

A useful tool for Privacy Paranoids.

Download Ghostery