Internet Tracking
Historically, about three quarters of websites on the Internet have employed technical measures to track the activities of their users.1 A number of different methods are used, but the ultimate objective of tracking is to build a comprehensive profile of the user.
Tracking Basics
Some 75% of the world’s websites track their users. The companies that operate these sites monitor what the user does on the site, how long they spend on each page, which links they click, what videos they watch, and any other collectible metric. Sites that implement tracking can sell the information they collect to data brokers, who in turn aggregate this information with data from other sources (like other websites, public records, etc.). Websites can also buy user profiles from data brokers, adding that information to the data they collect themselves. These sites can then do various nefarious things, including targeted advertising and charging different users different prices based upon the collected data.2
In the novel 1984, George Orwell created a dystopian future in which The Party sought to learn the thoughts of all its members, whether they agreed to share those thoughts or not. Party members were observed through surveillance systems and monitored by the Thought Police, who aggregated information from the various surveillance devices to determine whether or not a Party member was guilty of thought crime. Internet websites are essentially doing the same thing, since the ultimate objective of all this tracking is to figure out how people think. In this way, the companies operating these sites have created an unelected shadow government that has been called the “Big Other.”3 However, unlike in 1984, it is not merely Party members who are constantly surveilled. These companies will collect data from any human or even a cat walking across the keyboard. Not even animals or proles are free!
Section Contents
Each lesson is this section covers one Internet-based tracking mechanism. New tracking methods are constantly under development, so this list will probably always be incomplete.
Notes and References
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Adam Lerner, Anna K. Simpson, Tadayoshi Kohno, and Franziska Roesner. “Internet Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Trackers: An Archaeological Study of Web Tracking from 1996 to 2016.” 25th USENIX Security Symposium, Austin, TX, August 10-12, 2016. ↩
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Gonzalo Torres. Who Is Tracking You Online?. AVG Signal Blog. October 26, 2018. ↩
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Shoshana Zuboff. “Big other: Surveillance Capitalism and the Prospects of an Information Civilization.” Journal of Information Technology 30(1), 75-79. March 1, 2015. ↩
