Have you ever thought about the amount of information that is shared about you – freely – online? Are you ready to be shocked and perhaps a little unnerved?
I recently came across an extension for Chrome called Collusion (there is also a Firefox version) and it’s pretty neat.
After you’ve installed it, a small icon appears on your toolbar like this:
All you need to do is visit any web page and then click on the icon. Collusion will then generate a bubble graph with the current site at the center and then each site that was sent personal data about you around it. Here’s an example from a single visit to a major social media blog (click on image for full size):
For me, this is pretty frightening. One visit to one website and some information about that visit was sent to a total of 26 different sites! The circles outlined in red are considered confirmed tracking sites.
Collusion continues to track this information until you clear/reset the graph. And so here’s what it looks like after just another couple of minutes of random browsing:
Although all of this data flying around does not necessarily mean that your private/personal details are being shared to all and sundry – websites are increasingly using apis and third-party web services to provide the functionality that they require (e.g. commenting engines, social media shares, etc). But I still think that this is pretty alarming and certainly makes me consider my own views on online privacy.
Thanks for sharing ‘though in a way I would have preferred not to know!
Yeah me too. Still can’t believe that one page on one site generates 26 connections to other sites (many of which are tracking).