We're not alone

This week I installed an add-on for both Firefox and Chrome that allows me to see what websites are following me as I use the internet.  It is actually pretty astounding just how many different people know all of the clicks you do on the internet - most of which is probably use to sell ads, but it is stored data none the less.  For example, Facebook likely knows everything you do on the internet even when you are not logged into your account.  Many people, for security reasons, 'register' different computers with Facebook so that both you and them know it is actually you.  On the other hand, this registers your IP address with them, so they can link that IP address back to your anonymous browsing when not logged in.

Check it:

This is a picture of a 'test' browse.  I started at yahoo.com, went to facebook and logged out before leaving, then went to hulu, amazon and pandora.  So I went to 5 web sites (each circle above is a site, ones with a 'halo' are ones I actually went to) and the above web of connections is what resulted.  They were all interconnected and were aware of my browsing activity in addition to other web sources that I never actually went to.

This shows just the connections made by a site 'invisiblehand' that I never actually went to.  They know that I was at both facebook and amazon, and they let google, twitter and some other sites I don't know aware of what I was doing.

This one shows that more clearly.  These are the connections made by facebook.  Not only is facebook telling those 6 sites listed on the left that I was on their page, but they were following me and aware that I was at both amazon and pandora.  So even if you don't have 'social' turned on with pandora, 'social' still knows.  ...I think invisiblehand was a plug in I had (as in I removed it after seeing this) that told me whether other sites had things for a lower price, like books.

Pretty crazy!  Happy online shopping! Since this time I have seen some sites with wayyyy more activity.  One single site I went to informed over 30 other sites that I was there.  Jerks.