Its news that shouldn’t shock anyone then TechRadar Pro Reporting similar stats last year, Google’s web trackers were found to make up half of all trackers out there on the internet.
Data analysis from security visualization firm Lokker’s latest biannual Online data privacy report (Opens in a new tab)VPN service Atlas VPN revealed that out of all the trackers on the web, a staggering 49.9% belong to Google alone.
YouTube and Doubleclick, both Google businesses, have a 13.8% and 8.3% share of online trackers, respectively. Facebook trackers make up 15.7% of online trackers, Microsoft tops the list at 6%, and Hotjar, a behavioral analytics tool, has 6.3%.
Store sensitive data
Internet sites are full of trackers – small website elements that track people as they go about their digital business. Many technology companies then use these trackers to create pseudonymous user profiles and sell them to advertisers.
These profiles are the reason why some ads seem to follow you across the vast plains of the internet, and others seem so pertinent to your interests — even if you’re not logged into a service owned by the tech giants in charge.
Overall, 93.7% of online trackers are either from Google, Facebook, or Microsoft.
These trackers are used to track people’s browsing habits and store IP addresses, as well as other personal information. It helps companies understand how consumers interact with websites and how they make purchases.
However, there are other privacy threats that can corrupt people’s safety online that big tech companies are taking advantage of. Session replay scripts, for example, were found on 35% of the websites analyzed.
These scripts record sessions (people’s interactions with a website) to better understand how they behave when they get to a particular page (how long they stay, where they click, how far they scroll, etc.).
Since these scripts can also capture personally identifiable information that may make users more vulnerable to identity theft, users should consider taking measures to block them, such as a secure browser.
