Web tracking and browser cookies have been in the news a lot lately, which is resulted in a lot of renewed interest and questions around the topic. The purpose of this is to give a comprehensive overview of what a web tracker is, the reasons why they are used, in shed some light on some of the creepy things that companies like Google and Facebook do with you web usage.
What is a web tracker exactly?
A web tracker is a piece of code or script running on websites designed to pull data points on a website visitor. This can be a cookie, JavaScript code, or some other embedded script. Depending on what is being tracked and how data is being collected, websites will use a variety of web trackers.
Types of web trackers
Cookies
Cookies are a commonly used method to track web usage. Cookies are small pieces of data saved to your browser by websites. Every time you visit a web page, cookies can be stored on your device. But not all cookies are created equal. The website that you are visiting may have its own cookies, called first-party cookies, which are placed to suggest content that is most relevant for you, help you remember your log ins, prevent fraud, and more. Modern website implementations like McNair Media’s websites don’t use cookies and instead allow the browser itself to remember passwords and other data.
Embedded scripts
Embedded Scripts are another popular method of third-party trackers to run as you visit websites and can do several things to track you, from recording your IP address to capturing your device’s specifications. Common examples are pixel trackers that are clear images embedded on a web page or email. This information can show whether you have visited a page or opened an email. McNair Media does not use tracking pixels in our email marketing platform or deploys any type of IP address collection.
Fingerprinting
Fingerprinting is a type of online tracking that’s more invasive than ordinary cookie-based tracking. A digital fingerprint of your web usage is created when an advertising technology company makes a unique profile of you based on your computer hardware, software, add-ons, and even system preferences. Your settings like your screen size, the fonts you have installed on your computer, and even your choice of a web browser can all be used to create a fingerprint of you. We mask our visitors’ IP addresses and do not track their browser fingerprint, to comply with European privacy laws.
First party versus third-party trackers
From the explanations above, web trackers sound pretty terrible with little benefit to website visitors. It would be easy to think that blocking all forms of web tracking would be helpful. Here at McNair Media, we would argue that third-party web trackers are the nefarious ones and shouldn’t be used.
First party web trackers
First party web trackers are web trackers that are controlled and managed by the website/server itself. A good example of a first party web tracker is our own website performance and usage tracker, which is server monitoring and site resource tracking tool. Scripts like this run locally on our server and do not transmit data out into an offsite database. This data isn’t being compiled into customer databases or being cross-referenced to create an advertising profile. It’s purpose is to make your browsing experience on our site better and that’s it.
Third party web trackers
Third party web tracker’s work differently and usually have a more nefarious endgame with user’s data. While they can also monitor things like server usage and site performance, they are sharing website visitor data with offsite servers to then create an advertising profile that isn’t always controlled by the website owner that installed it. These third-party web trackers also turn all the sites that are using this web tracker into a coordinated network of sucking user data and building a larger picture of a user’s web usage. Good examples of third-party web trackers like this are Google Analytics and Facebook Pixel. Both tracking tools are presented to small business owners as ways to monitor their web usage, ad campaign performance, sales through their websites, but they are really tools that power these company’s massive data collection efforts.
