Do you really know where your browser goes when you type a URI into its address bar? Do you realise that your browser not only accesses the site you intended but may also have visited 3rd party websites running connected services?
For many of us this revelation is nothing new but to a lot of surfers this type of activity is news – for the simple reason that it happens behind the scenes.
Lightbeam, which was first published as an experimental release named Collusion, is an extension for Firefox and was released by Mozilla in 2013 to help users understand the array of first and third party companies people interact with every day across the Web. Lightbeam for Firefox is developed with support from the Ford Foundation and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, as well as faculty and students from the Emily Carr University. The rebranded extension is now called Lightbeam, and is compatible with Firefox 18 and newer. Lightbeam works by recording third-party HTTP requests in the pages visited with the browser, noting requests that match a list of web tracking services and advertisers. The list itself originally came from privacychoice.org.
Lightbeam for Firefox:: Tools Lightbeam is a Firefox add-on that enables you to see the first and third party sites you interact with on the Web. Using interactive visualizations, Lightbeam shows you the relationships between these third parties and the sites you visit. Lightbeam is a Firefox add-on that enables you to see the first and third party sites you interact with on the Web. Using interactive visualizations, Lightbeam shows you the relationships between.
Sometimes, but by no means always, you can see the end results of this behind the scenes traffic on the website you’re visiting; it’s essential for delivering features like Google AdSense, Facebook Likes or Pinterest ‘Pin it’ buttons for example.
What’s happening is that when you type a URL into your browser it fetches the web page you asked for and then it fetches anything else that web page says it needs.
Typically a page will contain instructions to fetch things like stylesheets that control the layout of the page, graphics and photographs to illustrate it and scripts to create functionality.
Those things might come from the same website as the page you asked for but they don’t have to, the web page can also ask for things from 3rd party websites.
To both the web browser and the 3rd party websites involved these unseen secondary requests are indistinguishable from a user just typing a URL into the address bar.
This is an extremely useful feature, one that is essential to the operation of a lot of web services, but it allows the 3rd parties involved to do things you might not expect such as track your ‘visit’ or set cookies on your browser.
This isn’t a secret but it isn’t obvious either. Web browsers have ways of showing you this traffic if you want to see it but it’s not visible in a form that would make sense to a non-technical user.
Recently, Mozilla released a new add-on for Firefox called Lightbeam. The primary purpose of Lightbeam is to help people better understand how the web works and to shine a light on the realities of data tracking.
Released at this year’s MozFest, Lightbeam builds on existing technology called Collusion to give users more control over their surfing activities and how they are being monitored on the web.
In a blog post announcing Lightbeam, Mozilla’s Alex Fowler stated, “we believe that everyone should be in control of their user data and privacy”.
I thought this sounded like a great tool for those of us who seek more transparency in the way our online activities are tracked so I gave Lightbeam a quick test drive.
I picked a handful of social media and news sites (including Naked Security) to see how connected they all were and to see if I could learn about some of the 3rd party connections that I hadn’t known existed.
In all, I visited 12 sites which connected me with 127 3rd party sites.
For example, a visit to Naked Security yielded 21 3rd party connections. Some of these connections are to services like Facebook, LinkedIn, Reddit and Twitter which we use to make it easier for our readers to share content.
Some are to services that provide additional content, like Sophos videos on YouTube, and some are analytics services which help us understand which articles are popular.
Lightbeam allows you to filter by visited and 3rd party sites. Visited sites are the sites that you either typed the URI in the browser yourself or explicitly clicked on a link to access the content.
3rd party sites are sites that are connected to the sites you visited that might collect information about you without any explicit interaction.
Lightbeam also gives you the ability to drill down into these site interactions and optionally block or watch certain sites of your choosing.
To be clear 3rd party services and 3rd party cookies are not intrinsically bad and can be employed for many useful purposes that don’t involve tracking.
Even those 3rd parties that are involved in tracking might be putting their data to uses that at least some of their users will agree with and benefit from.
For example Twitter monitors the websites its users visit with its tweet buttons and then uses the data to personalise its Trends.
Some Twitter users will feel this improves the site, others will be ambivalent and some will see it as unwelcome and invasive (if you’re one of those people you can disable the feature by enabling Do Not Track in your browser or through your Twitter security settings).
Fowler makes a good point when he says:
When we’re unable to understand the value these companies provide and make informed choices about their data collection practices, the result is a steady erosion of trust for all stakeholders.
For most privacy advocates this translates to transparency. If we know who is tracking us and what they’re doing with our data we can decide what level of trust and risk we’re willing to undertake.
Tools like Lightbeam give us greater visibility and control over which websites we are really visiting and allow us to make better decisions about who we transact with. A more open web means a better experience for everyone involved.
Chrome users can still download the Collusion add-on from the Chrome Web Store which will provide similar information and functionality.
If you’d like to know more about the 3rd party connections we use on Naked Security then take a look at our Cookies and Scripts page. You’ll find a list of cookies, their domains and who sets them as well as links to privacy policies and vendor opt-outs.
(Redirected from Collusion (software))
Lightbeam showing the trackers on the website 'abovetopsecret.com' | |
Initial release | 2011 |
---|---|
Stable release | |
Repository | https://github.com/mozilla/lightbeam-we |
Type | Mozilla extension |
License | MPL 2.0 |
Website | https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/lightbeam-3-0/ |
Lightbeam (called Collusion in its experimental version) is an add-on for Firefox that displays third party tracking cookies placed on the user's computer while visiting various websites. It displays a graph of the interactions and connections of sites visited and the tracking sites to which they provide information.[1]
Functionality[edit]
Once installed and enabled, Lightbeam records all tracking cookies saved on the user's computer through the Firefox browser by the various sites that the user visits.[2] It differentiates between 'behavioural' tracking cookies (those which record specific actions on a site) and other tracking cookies.[3][4] At any time during a browsing session the user can open a separate tab, using the 'Show Lightbeam' option of Tools, to display a graph of sites visited and cookies placed. This will show when a given cookie is used by multiple sites, thus enabling those sites to track the user from site to site. Lightbeam will also allow the user to see which advertisers or other third parties are connected to which cookies, and thus can develop information about the user's browsing from site to site.[3][4]
Mozilla emphasizes that it displays its data in real time.[2][4]
According to Mozilla, all data collected by Lightbeam is stored locally, and is not shared with anyone, unless the user intentionally exports the data and shares it manually.[3][4] Future versions may include provisions to reject or delete tracking cookies as well as monitoring them.[3]
Lightbeam For Firefox
TED presentation[edit]
Gary Kovacs, CEO of Mozilla, presented Collusion in a TED talk (Technology, Entertainment, Design) in early 2012.[2][5]
'Collusion will allow us to pull back the curtain and provide users with more information about the growing role of third parties, how data drives most Web experiences, and ultimately how little control we have over that experience and our loss of data.' Kovacs wrote in a Mozilla blog post about the TED talk.[6]
Reactions[edit]
Writing for ExtremeTech, Sebastian Anthony found the tracking connections revealed by Collusion to be 'quite astonishing'.[7] He went on to say that: 'Now, you can either use Collusion to shock and appall yourself, or you can use it to show friends and family just how rampant behavioral tracking is. Once your mother sees that no less than five companies track her behavior when she visits MSNBC.com, and six when she visits FoxNews.com, she might be a little more cautious.'[7]
'Ms Smith' finds the results of Collusion to be 'jaw dropping'.[4]
Stephen C. Webster, writing for The Raw Story wrote of the information provided by Collusion: 'While it doesn’t sound all that creepy, just wait until you see your own graph. A brief test-run by Raw Story revealed that after clicking a number of popular websites — like Comedy Central, Netflix, Hulu, the Conan O’Brien show, Amazon, The New York Times and others — more than three dozen organizations were tracking our movements across multiple websites.'[8]
History and plans[edit]
Collusion was originally developed by Atul Varma, a Mozilla engineer, as an independent project.[3] It was later adopted as a Mozilla project.[3]
Mozilla had announced that they would be continuing the development of Collusion with support from the Ford Foundation in 2012.[4][2][6] However, beginning in October 2019, they ended official support in favour of built in Enhanced Tracking Protection in Firefox.[9]
Lightbeam Firefox Mobile
Notes[edit]
Lightbeam For Firefox
- ^Gibbs, Samuel (28 October 2013). 'Firefox Mozilla's Lightbeam Firefox tool shows who's tracking your online movements'. Guardian. Retrieved 5 November 2013.
- ^ abcdNeal, Dave (March 1, 2012). 'Mozilla Collusion lets you see who is tracking you'. The Inquirer. Incisive Media. Retrieved 4 November 2013.
- ^ abcdefPaul, Ian (February 29, 2012). 'Firefox Add-On Collusion Shows Who's Tracking You Online'. PC World. Retrieved 4 November 2013.
- ^ abcdef'Ms. Smith' (June 21, 2012). 'Track the trackers with Collusion: Interview with Mozilla's Ryan Merkley'. Network World. Retrieved 4 November 2013.
- ^'Gary Kovacs: Tracking our online trackers'. TED Talks. May 2012. Retrieved 4 November 2013.
- ^ abKovacs, Gary (28 February 2012). 'Quest for Transparency'. Archived from the original on 12 October 2013. Retrieved 4 November 2013.
- ^ abAnthony, Sebastian (July 8, 2011). 'How to visualize behavior tracking cookies with a Firefox add-on'. ExtremeTech. Ziff Davis. Retrieved 5 November 2013.
- ^Webster, Stephen C. (March 1, 2012). 'Software gives visual representation of who's following you online'. The Raw Story. Retrieved 5 November 2013.
- ^'Lightbeam extension for Firefox is no longer supported | Firefox Help'. support.mozilla.org. Retrieved 2019-11-15.
Firefox Collusion
Retrieved from 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lightbeam_(software)&oldid=988738103'