As you're no doubt aware, when you visit websites you get tracked, usually by advertisers. That's why when you do a search on Amazon for a widget, then go to Facebook, you'll find that there's an advert for the self same widget there, and on every other site that you go to. However, have you ever wanted to know just how many trackers there are on websites? There's a very useful little tool called Ghostery which will tell you. It's a browser extension which works with all the major browsers, and you can install it with a single click. When you want to see how you're being tracked, simply click on the little blue ghost on the browser toolbar and you'll get a nice little dialogue box popping up which looks like this:
This is the result for a search on the Daily Mail rag; 21 different trackers. In comparison, there are 11 on the CILIP site, 2 on the BBC, 14 on the Guardian site and a whopping 44 on the Sun newspaper site. Ghostery then allows you to track them, or to block them. It's a useful little tool and worth the 2 seconds it takes to install it. It really is an eyeopener.
