Web's Secret Trackers

Sarah Crouch

Sherwin, A. (2013, October 26) New Mozilla app reveals web's secret trackers. The New Zealand Herald. Retrieved from http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=11146583

I've always wondered about who is really watching me online and how often I'm being watched. A new add-on for Firefox will reveal third-party activity on websites. The add-on, called Lightbeam, would show the source of advertisements and would provide a graph showing unintentional interactions with third-parties. Mozilla made this move in order to allow more transparency and was apparently under pressure to do so. While I would be a little nervous to "pull back the curtain" and find out who is watching me, I know that many people, myself included, are going to be interested in this add-on.

Privacy concerns are one of the many reasons why solid instruction in internet safety and information literacy is so important. Many of my students are completely unaware of what cookies are or how to disable them, but they are very active online. Helping students create a Personal Learning Environment with clear separations between personal internet usage and professional/academic internet usage could also help students learn how to manage their lives online. If students learn how to safely use the internet at school, they are more likely to do so at home.