Shed a Light on Third Party Sites
It’s amazing to see just how closely we’re being watched and tracked online. I always knew that a lot of my information was being monitored on social media and apps on my phone but I was unaware of just how many people have access to my every move, even when surfing the web.
I downloaded “Lightbeam” as a way to view how many third party sites had access to my information. The results were astonishing. To get a well-rounded look at how many people are watching me everyday, I accessed sites which I frequently check such as the following:
Youtube
ipsy (makeup subscription boxes)
Facebook
Nordstrom
myRyerson.ca
Personal email
Google calendar
In total, I visited 10 sites and connected with 143 third party sites. That means that on average, for every site I visited, there were about 14 third parties that I connected with. I noticed that there were some sites that had significantly more third party sites connected to it than others. The most noticeable ones were ipsy and Nordstrom.
In terms of ipsy, I understand why so many third parties connected with me since I have a lot of personal information on that site. Some of this information includes my address, credit card and even personal information such as my hair colour, skin tone and eye colour. In addition, every time I receive a bag, I rate the products so each month, my bag is more customized to my likes.
Nordstrom was another site which had an enormous amount of third party sites. As a marketing student, I can understand why they do this. Being able to view what shoppers are clicking on can help Nordstrom create ads and suggestions on its site which could either remind you of a product you were looking at or show you complementary or similar products which you may also want to buy.
There were also some sites that had connections to several other websites such as Google. Google had a connection with practically every site I visited. It really made me realize just how much information Google has, which brought up the thought of, “What do they do with all that data?”.
What I have learnt from this experience is that everything online is connected and every move is being watched. The collection of data and habits of people online are being followed and turned into data which makes me realize that nothing online is truly private.