Track THIS
Mozilla recently announced enhanced tracking protection would be the default in its flagship Firefox browser. That's because everything you do on the internet is being tracked by Facebook, Google, Amazon, Twitter and pretty much any other service or website that wants to serve you ads. Today Firefox is launching Track THIS (with emphasis) to demonstrate how that tracking works based on your browser behavior.
It's all about cookies, not the delicious kind that crumble onto your shirt as you Cookie Monster the hell out of them, but rather the kind that are stored by your browser that remember all the little things you do. Some are helpful, like keeping things in your shopping cart if you navigate away from a site, or language preferences. But, like actual cookies, the sugar rush can be a bit unhealthy.
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Web cookies are also used to collect information about your internet use, often without consent — though there are regulations in play that explain why you've been seeing more consent windows popping up. There are first party and third party cookies, the difference being akin to a friend baking them for you and accepting an oatmeal raisin cookie from a stranger behind the 7-11.
Track THIS brings that out-of-sight third party cookie tracking front and center by opening 100 tabs of nonsense to trick trackers into thinking you are someone you are not. Track THIS gives you four choices of who to be on the internet for 100 tabs: Hypebeast, Filthy Rich, Doomsday and Influencer. Whichever alter-ego you choose really doesn't matter, the point remains the same — you are being tracked and Mozilla wants you to use Firefox's enhanced tracking protection.
The Track THIS tool works in Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Edge and is not optimized for mobile. It will literally open 100 tabs of random crap, tricking third-party sites into delivering ads for stuff you don't give a hot holy steaming frak about, which probably isn't different from any other day of navigating past ads to that sweet, sultry content you love to consume. You'll have to force quit your browser after the experiment, or choose the close all tabs option from the Track THIS page.
It's a temporary distraction to the third-party trackers. Eventually, you'll grow weary of opening 100 tabs and slogging your computer's memory and your regular ads more aligned with your browsing behavior will begin to pop up again.
Firefox isn't messing around in its campaign to get you to use its enhanced tracking features, partnering with MSCHF Internet Studios to create Track THIS and pull back the curtain a bit on how third-party ad trackers work. There is of course an easier solution to all this tracking — use a VPN. Then you can browse to your heart's content, consume all the weird stuff that twinkles your nips and not worry about being tracked.
While Track THIS might peel back your eyelids just enough to see the hellscape of ad tracking and intrusive data collection the internet has become, the lesson here remains the same: if you aren't paying for the product, you are the product. While Firefox is willing to offer stronger protections, third-party cookie blocking included, you are still better off just shutting off the internet and retreating to a cabin in the woods with no WiFi.
