| LWN.net needs you! Without subscribers, LWN would simply not exist. Please consider signing up for a subscription and helping to keep LWN publishing |
In Lightbeam, background scripts capture, filter and store the request data used by Lightbeam's visualization. While both extension page scripts and background scripts have access to the WebExtensions APIs (they share the same moz-extension:// origin), they differ in many other respects. Lightbeam for Firefox:: Tools Lightbeam is a Firefox add-on that enables you to see the first and third party sites you interact with on the Web. Using interactive visualizations, Lightbeam shows you the relationships between these third parties and the sites you visit. Lightbeam for Firefox enables you to see the first and third-party sites you interact with on the web. It does this by using interactive visualizations and shows you the relationships between these third parties and the sites you visit.
Lightbeam is an add-on for Firefox that brings to light the array of first and third party companies people interact with everyday across the Web. Development of Lightbeam for Firefox is developed with support from the Ford Foundation and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, and aided by faculty and students of the Emily Carr University of Art and Design.
In early 2012, Mozilla released Collusion, an experimental extension for Firefox that recorded third-partyweb tracking and rendered its information in a graph-likevisualization. Since then, the add-on has undergone furtherdevelopment, and Mozilla announced its first majorupdate on October 25. Maplestory v62 private server. In a move that will come as no shock toMozilla watchers, the project has been renamed, but it also now offersadditional ways to dig into the tracking data that the extensioncollects, and users can now choose to contribute their trackingstatistics to a data survey Mozilla is conducting on web privacy.
The rebranded extension is now called Lightbeam, and iscompatible with Firefox 18 and newer. Lightbeam works by recordingthird-party HTTP requests in the pages visited with the browser, noting requests that match a list of web tracking services andadvertisers. The list itself originally came from privacychoice.org. Eachtracker encountered is saved in a local recordthat notes which domain linked to the tracker, whether cookies wereset by the request, whether the request was made via HTTP or HTTPS,whether the user has actually visited the tracker domain in question,and a few other details about the connection.
You're on candid camera
Caterpillar v80e manual. The first visualization of this data (and the only option in theCollusion-branded release) was a connected graph, withedges connecting the domains that a user has intentionally visited toall of the tracker domains that come along for the ride. Not onlydoes that visualization immediately show which sites are the worstthird-party tracking offenders, but it also reveals how manyindependent sites are sending data back to the same tracking service.This is an educational experience; most users are aware that large webservice companies like Google and Facebook do web tracking, but seeingthe full list of third-party, business-to-business web-tracking siteswithout household names is another thing altogether.
The graph is updated in real time, which makes for interesting (andarguably creepy) viewing in a separate window while one goes about theday's surfing. For example, over the past 48 hours, Lightbeamindicates that I have visited 94 sites, which have in turncollectively reached out to 177 third-party sites. Not all of thosethird-party sites are trackers, of course: those that are known to betracking services are rendered as blue-outlined nodes, while others arerendered with white outlines. The graph shows visited sites ascircles and third-party sites as triangles.
Interested users should note, though, that Lightbeam is still onthe buggy side; the project's GitHub issue tracker indicates thatquite a few users are encountering compatibility problems with otherextensions—particularly those that also deal with third-partyweb tracking or privacy protection. There also appear to be severalFirefox privacy preference settings that break Lightbeam. Ironically,of course, the users most interested in Lightbeam are likely to alsobe the most interested in tweaking privacy settings and in installingother web-tracking countermeasures, so these unresolved issues greatlyimpact Lightbeam's usefulness.
When it does work, the graph visualization allows one to focus inon each individual site, which shuffles around the graph connectionsso that the site of interest is in the center. Clicking on a nodealso opens a side pane showing the server location and the list ofthird-party sites that have been contacted. While the graph isrevealing from a big-picture perspective, it is also not necessarilythe easiest way to study in depth. Luckily, Lightbeam offers twoother views on the same data. The 'clock' provides a time-based lookat the visits and third-party connections made, and there is also astraightforward list.
Users can also save the extension's current data locally, or resetit to begin a new capture session. That capability would be mostuseful to do something like compare the effect that changing the 'DoNot Track' preference has on third-party trackers, but in my testsenabling the 'Do Not Track' setting was one of the preferences thatstopped Lightbeam from working altogether.
Spies like us
Better visualization features are nice, but arguably the biggestchange in the revamped extension is the fact that Lightbeam users canopt-in to send their data to Mozilla. That might sound a tadoxymoronic, but Mozilla insists that the data collected from userswill be anonymized and will only be published in aggregate. Forinstance, only the domain and subdomain of visited sites are recorded,not the path component of URLs, so in most cases usernames and otherpersonally-indentifiable data will not be included.
Lightbeam Software
In September 2012, Mozilla's David Ascher wroteabout the so that users can better understand what types ofrequest are in their interest and which are not. He also said thatMozilla intended to use the data to work with site publishers. Theblog post announcing the October Lightbeam release followed up on thisidea, albeit with few specifics. The post says only that 'Oncethe open data set has time to mature, we'll continue to explore howpublishers can benefit from additional insights into the interactionof third parties on their sites.'
There indeed may be a lot about third-party tracking (bothcommercial tracking services and tracking that is performedsurreptitiously) that site owners in general are generally in the darkabout. Still, it would be nice to have more detail available aboutexactly what the data collection effort at Mozilla will look like beforeopting in to it. In the meantime, though, Lightbeam definitely does'pull back the curtain' (as the blog post puts it) on webtracking for individual users. Hopefully as Mozilla pursues a broadereffort, the results will be enlightening for users of the web ingeneral—most of whom know that 'web tracking' exists in someform, but for whom its full extents and methods remain a mystery.
Lightbeam showing the trackers on the website 'abovetopsecret.com' | |
| Initial release | 2011 |
|---|---|
| Stable release | |
| Repository | https://github.com/mozilla/lightbeam-we |
| Type | Mozilla extension |
| License | MPL 2.0 |
| Website | https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/lightbeam-3-0/ |
Lightbeam (called Collusion in its experimental version) is an add-on for Firefox that displays third party tracking cookies placed on the user's computer while visiting various websites. It displays a graph of the interactions and connections of sites visited and the tracking sites to which they provide information.[1]
Functionality[edit]
Once installed and enabled, Lightbeam records all tracking cookies saved on the user's computer through the Firefox browser by the various sites that the user visits.[2] It differentiates between 'behavioural' tracking cookies (those which record specific actions on a site) and other tracking cookies.[3][4] At any time during a browsing session the user can open a separate tab, using the 'Show Lightbeam' option of Tools, to display a graph of sites visited and cookies placed. This will show when a given cookie is used by multiple sites, thus enabling those sites to track the user from site to site. Lightbeam will also allow the user to see which advertisers or other third parties are connected to which cookies, and thus can develop information about the user's browsing from site to site.[3][4]
Mozilla emphasizes that it displays its data in real time.[2][4]
According to Mozilla, all data collected by Lightbeam is stored locally, and is not shared with anyone, unless the user intentionally exports the data and shares it manually.[3][4] Future versions may include provisions to reject or delete tracking cookies as well as monitoring them.[3]
TED presentation[edit]
Gary Kovacs, CEO of Mozilla, presented Collusion in a TED talk (Technology, Entertainment, Design) in early 2012.[2][5]
'Collusion will allow us to pull back the curtain and provide users with more information about the growing role of third parties, how data drives most Web experiences, and ultimately how little control we have over that experience and our loss of data.' Kovacs wrote in a Mozilla blog post about the TED talk.[6]
Reactions[edit]
Light Beam For Firefox Review
Writing for ExtremeTech, Sebastian Anthony found the tracking connections revealed by Collusion to be 'quite astonishing'.[7] He went on to say that: 'Now, you can either use Collusion to shock and appall yourself, or you can use it to show friends and family just how rampant behavioral tracking is. Once your mother sees that no less than five companies track her behavior when she visits MSNBC.com, and six when she visits FoxNews.com, she might be a little more cautious.'[7]
'Ms Smith' finds the results of Collusion to be 'jaw dropping'.[4]
Stephen C. Webster, writing for The Raw Story wrote of the information provided by Collusion: 'While it doesn't sound all that creepy, just wait until you see your own graph. A brief test-run by Raw Story revealed that after clicking a number of popular websites — like Comedy Central, Netflix, Hulu, the Conan O'Brien show, Amazon, The New York Times and others — more than three dozen organizations were tracking our movements across multiple websites.'[8]
History and plans[edit]
Collusion was originally developed by Atul Varma, a Mozilla engineer, as an independent project.[3] It was later adopted as a Mozilla project.[3]
Mozilla had announced that they would be continuing the development of Collusion with support from the Ford Foundation in 2012.[4][2][6] However, beginning in October 2019, they ended official support in favour of built in Enhanced Tracking Protection in Firefox.[9]
In September 2012, Mozilla's David Ascher wroteabout the so that users can better understand what types ofrequest are in their interest and which are not. He also said thatMozilla intended to use the data to work with site publishers. Theblog post announcing the October Lightbeam release followed up on thisidea, albeit with few specifics. The post says only that 'Oncethe open data set has time to mature, we'll continue to explore howpublishers can benefit from additional insights into the interactionof third parties on their sites.'
There indeed may be a lot about third-party tracking (bothcommercial tracking services and tracking that is performedsurreptitiously) that site owners in general are generally in the darkabout. Still, it would be nice to have more detail available aboutexactly what the data collection effort at Mozilla will look like beforeopting in to it. In the meantime, though, Lightbeam definitely does'pull back the curtain' (as the blog post puts it) on webtracking for individual users. Hopefully as Mozilla pursues a broadereffort, the results will be enlightening for users of the web ingeneral—most of whom know that 'web tracking' exists in someform, but for whom its full extents and methods remain a mystery.
Lightbeam showing the trackers on the website 'abovetopsecret.com' | |
| Initial release | 2011 |
|---|---|
| Stable release | |
| Repository | https://github.com/mozilla/lightbeam-we |
| Type | Mozilla extension |
| License | MPL 2.0 |
| Website | https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/lightbeam-3-0/ |
Lightbeam (called Collusion in its experimental version) is an add-on for Firefox that displays third party tracking cookies placed on the user's computer while visiting various websites. It displays a graph of the interactions and connections of sites visited and the tracking sites to which they provide information.[1]
Functionality[edit]
Once installed and enabled, Lightbeam records all tracking cookies saved on the user's computer through the Firefox browser by the various sites that the user visits.[2] It differentiates between 'behavioural' tracking cookies (those which record specific actions on a site) and other tracking cookies.[3][4] At any time during a browsing session the user can open a separate tab, using the 'Show Lightbeam' option of Tools, to display a graph of sites visited and cookies placed. This will show when a given cookie is used by multiple sites, thus enabling those sites to track the user from site to site. Lightbeam will also allow the user to see which advertisers or other third parties are connected to which cookies, and thus can develop information about the user's browsing from site to site.[3][4]
Mozilla emphasizes that it displays its data in real time.[2][4]
According to Mozilla, all data collected by Lightbeam is stored locally, and is not shared with anyone, unless the user intentionally exports the data and shares it manually.[3][4] Future versions may include provisions to reject or delete tracking cookies as well as monitoring them.[3]
TED presentation[edit]
Gary Kovacs, CEO of Mozilla, presented Collusion in a TED talk (Technology, Entertainment, Design) in early 2012.[2][5]
'Collusion will allow us to pull back the curtain and provide users with more information about the growing role of third parties, how data drives most Web experiences, and ultimately how little control we have over that experience and our loss of data.' Kovacs wrote in a Mozilla blog post about the TED talk.[6]
Reactions[edit]
Light Beam For Firefox Review
Writing for ExtremeTech, Sebastian Anthony found the tracking connections revealed by Collusion to be 'quite astonishing'.[7] He went on to say that: 'Now, you can either use Collusion to shock and appall yourself, or you can use it to show friends and family just how rampant behavioral tracking is. Once your mother sees that no less than five companies track her behavior when she visits MSNBC.com, and six when she visits FoxNews.com, she might be a little more cautious.'[7]
'Ms Smith' finds the results of Collusion to be 'jaw dropping'.[4]
Stephen C. Webster, writing for The Raw Story wrote of the information provided by Collusion: 'While it doesn't sound all that creepy, just wait until you see your own graph. A brief test-run by Raw Story revealed that after clicking a number of popular websites — like Comedy Central, Netflix, Hulu, the Conan O'Brien show, Amazon, The New York Times and others — more than three dozen organizations were tracking our movements across multiple websites.'[8]
History and plans[edit]
Collusion was originally developed by Atul Varma, a Mozilla engineer, as an independent project.[3] It was later adopted as a Mozilla project.[3]
Mozilla had announced that they would be continuing the development of Collusion with support from the Ford Foundation in 2012.[4][2][6] However, beginning in October 2019, they ended official support in favour of built in Enhanced Tracking Protection in Firefox.[9]
Notes[edit]
- ^Gibbs, Samuel (28 October 2013). 'Firefox Mozilla's Lightbeam Firefox tool shows who's tracking your online movements'. Guardian. Retrieved 5 November 2013.
- ^ abcdNeal, Dave (March 1, 2012). 'Mozilla Collusion lets you see who is tracking you'. The Inquirer. Incisive Media. Retrieved 4 November 2013.
- ^ abcdefPaul, Ian (February 29, 2012). 'Firefox Add-On Collusion Shows Who's Tracking You Online'. PC World. Retrieved 4 November 2013.
- ^ abcdef'Ms. Smith' (June 21, 2012). 'Track the trackers with Collusion: Interview with Mozilla's Ryan Merkley'. Network World. Retrieved 4 November 2013.
- ^'Gary Kovacs: Tracking our online trackers'. TED Talks. May 2012. Retrieved 4 November 2013.
- ^ abKovacs, Gary (28 February 2012). 'Quest for Transparency'. Archived from the original on 12 October 2013. Retrieved 4 November 2013.
- ^ abAnthony, Sebastian (July 8, 2011). 'How to visualize behavior tracking cookies with a Firefox add-on'. ExtremeTech. Ziff Davis. Retrieved 5 November 2013.
- ^Webster, Stephen C. (March 1, 2012). 'Software gives visual representation of who's following you online'. The Raw Story. Retrieved 5 November 2013.
- ^'Lightbeam extension for Firefox is no longer supported | Firefox Help'. support.mozilla.org. Retrieved 2019-11-15.
