Online Tracking: The Things You Didn't Know [Infographic]

When you are browsing the Internet, do you really know what information you are sharing? Most people don’t have a clue that everything they do online could be being tracked. This includes what websites you visit, what you are interested in, and even who you really are. Most people stay unaware of their own footprints on the Internet, and how online tracking is affecting their experience. By knowing more about your online footprint, you have a chance to enhance your own browsing experience.

Governments around the world want to control the Internet down to its smallest fiber. What few people know is that we are already tracked in a way that makes our privacy quite obscured. We think we have privacy when browsing, but nothing could farther from the truth. As a matter of fact, everything we do can be tracked. Everything.

One thing that most people don’t know is that social networking services allow advertisers to take part in your browsing history in order to present banner ads and videos that they, after having automatically queried your browsing history, know will interest you and increase the probability of you clicking on it. With the right coding, any website owner can check what sites you have preciously visited and where you’re headed after viewing their website. Scared yet?

When social networking services talk about privacy, they don’t tell you about these things, do they? Well, you shouldn’t freak out just yet. These things are usually handled automatically through a script and are only logged to increase their advertisers’ return on investments. Of course that goes hand in hand with how much these websites can charge for the ads they display.

If you want to know more about online tracking, and how it affects you, you should have a look at an infographic called Online Tracking: You’re Being Watched, presented by Backgroundcheck. It is an almost shocking revelation about the ongoing online tracking being done by websites all around the world. Of course, at the same time this could start to worry you, the online tracking events could actually increase your experience as well. By being presented with topics and offers that are more likely to interest you, the possibility increases that you will enjoy your browsing session even more. But as online tracking is getting ever more advanced, where does it end when it comes to how far these watchful eyes are mocking around in our online footprint? Is the government really what we should be worried about, or is it the silent online tracking events that we should start looking at instead? You be the judge.