Are you aware of how often companies track your online history? There’s probably about five companies tracking you right now – as you read this post. Creepy, huh? They aren’t doing it for malicious reasons (well, most don’t). They do it to learn more about you – and hence, more about “us” as a whole. Google wants to know what you’re interested in, so it can deliver more targeted ads. Facebook wants to know the same thing. Have you ever found it strangely coincidental that you’ll see ads for forensic psychology jobs after researching the salary of a forensic psychologist? Ok, maybe your search wasn’t psychology related at all, but you know what I’m talking about. It’s as if someone is following you around the web. In essence, they are.
Some people get really agitated by this while others don’t let it bother them. If you’re among those who are really irked by the idea of someone tracking your online habits, there are options. There are a few companies that have popped up to fill this need and rescue you from having large corporations looking over your shoulder as you surf the web. Sure, you could try not to allow cookies on your browser, but you’d have trouble shopping online and doing a lot of other things too. It’s actually much more efficient to download a program that will block these tracking cookies for you.
Ghostery is among the best-known of these companies. I’m not endorsing it over any of the others, but this is the one I downloaded myself. It’s only been a few days, but it’s working great so far. Every time I visit a site, I see a message containing all of the tracking cookies that have been blocked. It pops up in the upper right-hand corner, and it goes away upon clicking. I could probably disable the notification completely, if I really wanted to. Some of the others that you might want to check out are Adblock Plus, Do Not Track Plus, and TrackerBlock.
