As we all know, there is no privacy on the internet . Our activities are monitored by various companies. This means that our visit to any site is being monitored. According to a study conducted by researchers at Microsoft, Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pennsylvania, major companies such as Google, Facebook and Oracle can track users when they visit pornographic sites . The worrying thing, however, is that they can do this even when users are using incognito mode , which is supposed to allow anonymous browsing.
Trackers on websites
There are many sites that use trackers and codes to track users' online activity, interests, and more. However, they do not inform users about the tracking. The sites track users either to show them specific ads based on their interests, or for other purposes.
Users who watch porn on the internet are being tracked
The researchers used a toolknown as webXrayto analyze 22,484 pornographic websites. With this tool, they were able to identify the companies and sites that were collecting user data.
According to the results, about 93% of the 22,484 sites exposed user data. Google was responsible for 74% of the trackers, Facebook for 10% and Oracle for 24%. In fact, it was found that the data was given to 7 other sites.
The researchers also used another tool, called policyXray. This tool was used to monitor the privacy policies of sites. The researchers observed that users give permission for tracking because they often do not have the ability to read the privacy policies.
What data is exposed?
According to the study, pornographic sites expose data , such as gender, sexual identity/orientation, and sex-related content.
The next time you want to watch porn on the internet, think about it! The big companies know your secret!
