How Much Are Your Favorite TV Websites Tracking You?

It's an unfortunate consequence of being online. Every website you visit is going to track your behavior on some level. Through simple cookies and more sophisticated tracking code, web sites follow everything from how many times you visited the site to your behavior before and after you're there. Commenting systems aggregate data on how you spend your time online and digital advertising agencies display ads based on which sites you've visited and why.

Now there's a handy Firefox browser extension called Ghostery that lets you see how many ways your favorite TV website is tracking your behavior. Each time you visit a website, a small box pops up that shows you a list of all the cookies and tracking code that is being used. It varies from site to site and here's a rundown of some of the industry's most prominent sites.

It is important to note that not all cookies or tracking code are inherently evil. There's certainly a need for websites to have some accurate way of counting and tracking visitors. The problem begins when these analytic firms use data aggregated across a large number of sites to track your online behavior.

But sharing data is more common than you might think. For instance, in a recent case in San Francisco, a man claimed that Hulu had used data collected from his Facebook likes in order to track his video habits.

How much this should concern you is a personal preference. There are browser extensions that will allow you to opt out or delete cookies. But before you make that decision, take a look at how some of your favorite TV network websites and industry news sites are tracking your behavior:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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