Simon Fodden at the invaluable Canadian blog Slaw alerts readers to a free browser plug-in that lets you see who's tracking you when you're online. As Fodden explains, "each time you visit most commercial websites, your browser is engaged to contribute data to a server somewhere, often the server of the site you’re visiting, but more often the computer of a company that’s struck a deal with the website you’re visiting. This all happens sub rosa and quite out of our awareness—strictly machine to machine. But there’s a way to surface this traffic and to learn about who wants what from you." The plug-in is called "Ghostery," and it shows you in a small box on your screen a "roll-call" of the ad networks, behavioral data providers, web publishers, and other companies looking at your online activity at that moment.
I confess to a bit of ambivalence about this app. On the one hand it's almost irresistible; install it and a little box shows you when you visit a site who's watching you. (You know they're there, right? It isn't just a coincidence that you start searchin g for vacation spots in Hawaii and start to get lots of customized ads for flip-flops and sunglasses.) Now you can actually see who's data-mining you. On the other hand, what are you going to do about it?
