I KNOW I鈥檓 being watched as I browse for new clothes online. I decide not to buy anything, but a dress that I lingered on starts to follow me around the internet, popping up in ads on totally unrelated sites.
Adverts that pursue us around the web are a familiar experience, but they鈥檙e just the most obvious manifestation of an intricate tracking network that follows our every move online. Now, researchers are building tools to help us understand not just who is tracking us, but how they are doing it, what they know, and how we can take back control.
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Giving users control over their data can be tricky, since companies have built profitable businesses around 鈥渂lack box鈥� algorithms that gather, crunch and share that data. At the Data Transparency Lab Conference at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, last week, researchers gathered to discuss new ways to poke holes in those boxes and show people what鈥檚 inside.
It鈥檚 an uphill battle. Surveys show that ordinary users have no idea about what happens to our data online. A team led by at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is helping to fill that knowledge gap.
They鈥檙e developing a browser extension that keeps an eye on every third party that tries to grab your data. Every time you go to a site, the extension takes a note of which advertisers are there, looking at what you鈥檙e looking at. It builds up a picture of what it thinks those companies have deduced about you: perhaps that you鈥檙e a fan of ice hockey, or where you go at weekends.
鈥淓very time you go to a site, the extension takes a note of which third-party advertisers are there鈥�
Ur is planning tests to see if the extension improves user awareness or changes their behaviour. 鈥淲e just want to provide transparency and see what impact that has,鈥� he says.
Web browsing isn鈥檛 the only way we鈥檙e tracked 鈥� social networks and smartphones are increasingly important. A system called the , built by a team at Carlos III University of Madrid in Spain, tries to calculate the monetary value in real time of the data users generate while they鈥檙e browsing.
A project named ReCon, led by at Northeastern University in Boston, tracks how our smartphone apps connect to the internet, watching to see what information they are gathering. An experiment examining the top 100 most popular iOS, Android, and Windows apps detected information such as user location and contacts sent out in plain text, often from apps that had no need for that data.
鈥淯sers aren鈥檛 aware of just how much they鈥檙e being tracked,鈥� says Choffnes. In early run-throughs with ReCon, even he was surprised to see certain apps broadcasting personal characteristics about him that they鈥檇 inferred, like his gender, location and date of birth.
鈥淎dvertisers are clearly inferring and learning a lot about us as individuals; properties that may or may not make users feel uncomfortable. I at least want users to be able to look at that data and make their own decision about if it seems reasonable or not,鈥� Choffnes says.
His group is now working on a feature that will automatically notify users when it detects suspicious activity, giving them a chance to halt the traffic in its tracks if they want to.
(Image: gilaxia/Getty)
This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淧rivacy apps will help you track the trackers鈥�
