Thought Leadership
Mozilla is currently being accused of tracking Firefox users without permission. A recent Kaspersky analysis shows the extent of data collection. The most common web tracking services have collected data on user behavior over 38 billion times within a year – an average of one million per day.
For the analysis, Kaspersky analyzed the 25 most widespread web tracking services, including Google services, YouTube Analytics, New Relic and Microsoft. In Europe, Google’s tracking services occupy by far the top position or positions: Google Display & Video 360 accounts for 17.27 percent of cases, while Google Analytics has 11.93 percent. Amazon Technologies is in third place with a share of 9.13%, followed by Criteo with 6.80%, YouTube Analytics (5.65%), Bing (5.33%) and Google AdSense (5.23%).
Companies use web tracking to collect, store and analyze data on users’ online behavior. This provides them with information on demographics, website visits, time spent on pages and interactions such as clicks, scrolling and mouse movements. From this, heat maps can be created and insights derived to further personalize the user experience, increase user engagement, target ads more effectively or measure the performance of their online services.
Anna Larkina, security and data protection expert at Kaspersky, explains:
“The more organizations store and process information, the higher the risk of data breaches. Most tracking is done by technology giants, so they have a strong interest in protecting user data to protect their reputation. Ultimately, however, users themselves must take responsibility for their own data protection, pay attention to the platforms they interact with and take appropriate measures to protect their privacy.”
