Do you know who鈥檚 tracking your movements online? A plug-in for the Firefox web browser called creates an at-a-glance visualisation showing which third parties want to grab your data.
Every time you access a website, numerous companies 鈥� website analytics firms, online advertisers or social media buttons 鈥� upload cookies to your computer to log which sites you visit and what you do once you are there.
Lightbeam is designed to show users exactly what is going on behind the scenes. When you log on to a site, it records every website that your computer is connecting with 鈥� often more than just the one you intended to visit. It then creates visualisations, ranging from a list to a clock-like design, displaying the information.
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鈥淢any people don鈥檛 understand all of the ways the web works 鈥� or all of the pieces of the web or interactions that aren鈥檛 immediately visible,鈥� says Alex Fowler, global privacy and public policy leader at Mozilla, the firm that makes Firefox. 鈥淟ightbeam helps us educate users, by shining a light on what we couldn鈥檛 otherwise see.鈥�
Bigger picture
The team behind Lightbeam is asking users to contribute their data so that a bigger picture of the relationship between websites and the third parties that operate behind the scenes can be built.
鈥淲e believe that everyone should have the tools to make their own decisions about their online privacy and who collects data on them,鈥� says Fowler. Lightbeam was unveiled at , the annual Mozilla conference, in London over the weekend.
鈥淭ools like these are vital for users to see how their information is being reshared and reused,鈥� says Jim Killock, executive director of the London-based , which campaigns on data privacy and internet censorship issues.
鈥淲hile they don鈥檛 fully solve the privacy problem, they are a huge step forward as people are able to visualise what is actually happening, rather than relying on misleading messages from advertisers,鈥� says Killock.
