Tracking the Trackers: Where Everybody Knows Your Username
by Jonathan Mayer October 11, 2011
The Center for Internet and Society (CIS) Stanford Law School
Click the local Home Depot ad and your email address gets handed to a dozen companies monitoring you. Your web browsing, past, present, and future, is now associated with your identity. Swap photos with friends on Photobucket and clue a couple dozen more into your username. Keep tabs on your favorite teams with Bleacher Report and you pass your full name to a dozen again. This isn't a 1984-esque scaremongering hypothetical. This is what's happening today.
[Update 10/11: Since several readers have asked - this study was funded exclusively by Stanford University and research grants to the Stanford Security Lab. It was not supported by any advocacy organization.]...