Note: This is a guest post by Suhith Rajesh
Collusion for Chrome – Everyday when we use the Internet, we are tracked by a whole load of websites, even without us knowing it. The reasons for tracking vary from advertising, gathering user information, and many others. Often, your browsing history are being monitored as well by these sites without your consent.
Thankfully, you can view and prevent all these with the help of Collusion. Collusion is an extension for Google Chrome but there is also an unofficial version for Firefox.
What does Collusion do?
Once you install Collusion in whichever browser you choose, just continue browsing, and then run Collusion. It will show you all websites that have sent some of your information away. It keeps track of every site that you visit before and to which other third-party sites it sends your information to.
The log of the websites you visit is stored on your computer and can be deleted by clicking the option “Reset the Graph” through this extension. It also gets deleted when you close the browser.
What does that graph mean?
The sites surrounded by a blue circle are the ones you’ve already visited. The ones surrounded by a red circle are the tracking sites. The gray circles represent sites that may track you. Some sites may have given your information away to the other sites (that you didn’t even visit). To identify those culprits, simply mouse over to the sites icons that you previously visited. Those gray lines you see that connect some of the circles will light up to display a web of connections between these sites.
In a way, this extension is an eye-opener! It brings us into the harsh reality of the internet where true privacy is pretty much zip.
How can I use the Internet without this sort of tracking?
The developer of this application has a solution to this problem. Log on to its site, disconnect.me. They have another tool called disconnect, which runs on Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. It makes sure that none of this tracking ever happens.
It’s a great tool to ensure your privacy among search engines and other websites that collect your data as it blocks them from sharing information about your browsing history with advertisers and/or other third parties.
Feel free to download Disconnect from the site and there are also other addons available to only block certain websites (like Facebook) from tracking your activities online.
Note: This post was written by Suhith Rajesh, the owner, founder and the guy who churns out articles for Bits of Tech Bytes. He loves all things tech, seriously all things tech. Please stop by his blog, he churns out interesting, useful content everyday.
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