What are cookies and trackers? What are the differences between first-party tracking and third-party tracking? What can you do to protect your data online? Keep reading to find out.
What’s a cookie?
You can’t see them but, a cookie is a small file sent to your browser by the websites you visit. Cookies can hold many different pieces of information including website preferences, language settings, login information, and more. Think of cookies as warehouses- they store information in your browser to be read again at a later time.
What’s a tracking pixel?
A tracking pixel ( a tracker) or tag is a small piece of code on a website. Trackers load when a user visits a website and they collect and relay information about the user’s current browsing situation (device type, location, IP address, etc.) to the tracker operator.
Where do tracking cookies come from?
Websites today use resources from other sites to build and add features to their pages. These features are often useful and even essential for a website to keep users coming back. Unfortunately, those same resources used to add features can be the biggest perpetrators of online tracking. Some of the most common resources that use tracking cookies include:
- Ads
- Social media widgets (Like and Share buttons, comments sections, etc)
- Web analytics
You don’t even need to click on an ad or social media sharing button for a cookie’s information about you to be transmitted back to the server where it originated. As soon as you load the page, the cookie is sent to the server. If no cookie exists yet, the server can create one.
Let’s say I do a google search for a gift I want to buy someone, and click the first result. The website can create a cookie or send and existing one to its server. Then, I start seeing ads on social media for the item I was initially researching. Even though I’m not on the website that sells the item, I’m loading a resource from it. Similarly, most ads and widgets aren’t hosted by the websites they reside on. They are just resources pulled from third-parties, and they all use cookies.
First-Party Tracking
First-party cookies and trackers are created by the website you’re visiting. Their purpose is to improve your browsing experience by doing things like remembering what items are in your shopping cart and saving your login credentials to prevent you from typing it every time you come back. For the most part, these are beneficial and even convenient cookies and trackers that help both the user and the website.
Third-Party Tracking
Third-party cookies and trackers are created and maintained by a third-party company, not the website you are visiting. Instead of tracking you on one website, they track you while you browse across multiple websites by creating a unique browser fingerprint. These third-party tracking scripts collect information about you and your online habits, as well as piecing together details about what you are researching, buying, or visiting on the web. They also collect data like which browser you are using, where you are located, and what times you are likely to be online.
All of this personal information is used to create a profile of you. Other companies then use these profiles to serve you with targeted advertising on items or services you are likely to purchase. Additionally, these profiles are sold to other organizations, who then can monetarily benefit from your data points like your location, age, and other demographics.
How to Stop Tracking Cookies
The first step to preventing tracking cookies from monitoring you is to delete the ones you already have. You can quickly and easily clear you cookies in your browser settings.
Your browser doesn’t distinguish between persistent cookies that perform useful tasks like keeping you logged into a website from those that invade your privacy and track you around the web. When you clear cookies in your browser, all of them are deleted.
Do Not Track
Somewhere in your browser settings you’ll find an option to toggle on Do Not Track. Turning this on will send a request for the website you’re currently on to disable its cross-site user tracking of individual users.Â
To learn how to adjust your settings in chrome from your web browser, Android, Apple devices, visit this link.
If you are using Mozilla Firefox, visit this link to learn how to disable tracking in your web browser or mobile devices.
While most sites honor your choice to opt out with the Do Not Track setting, many will not. Do Not Track does not add any technical limitations to the website and there’s no enforcement from any authority. That means there’s no real consequences for websites that ignore your opt-out request and use tracking cookies anyway.
You should definitely enable Do Not Track in your browser, but that’s not enough if you want to truly stop tracking cookies from profiling you.
Staying up to date on where all your browser cookies come from and whether they track you would be a very tedious task. Instead, you can install an anti-tracking extension in your browser to block tracking cookies for you. You can go to the App Store for whichever browser you are using, and choose the highest rated one with the best reviews.
All of these apps not only make the web more private, they also speed up load times by blocking third-party elements like ads so that you can browse (and shop) in peace.
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