If you browse the Internet a lot, then you should know that the services you use on a regular basis usually tracks your browsing habits in one way or the other. In many cases, a user have no idea which website is tracking his/her Internet activity, which is why Mozilla, the developer of the Firefox browser, wants to make things as easy as possible for the general Internet user with a new browser extension called Lightbeam.
Lightbeam allows Internet users to have a visual idea of what sites or third party services might be tracking their activity online. Once Lightbeam is installed, the user will get an interactive visualization of the visited websites along with the cluster of services that are tied to those sites. Whenever the user clicks on sections of the map that comes off as a solar system, the ability to see which website is gathering information about the user's website visiting habits will be available.
Officials at Mozilla hope the Lightbeam tool will bring awareness to web users about different third-party plug-ins used in and around the website.
"It really is a stake in the ground designed to start a conversation about privacy," said Mozilla's executive director Mark Surman.
"If you think about nutrition it's taken years of policy and public education about different types of food for people to be talk about a healthy diet. This is the same thing, this is saying 'Let's know a little bit more about what's happening' then we can get to discussions about what else is being tracked, to building tools to let you protect yourself, to education campaigns about how we want to protect about ourselves."
Furthermore, information collected by Lightbeam can be uploaded a database online that aggregates anonymous data about third party tracking across different sites.
"We need people to know how the web works and one element of that is privacy," Surman said.
"We're figuring out a significant part of how humans interact with each other and that will last for hundreds of years. As we figure that out there are different forces in play, the normal forces of creativity, commerce and government. It's part of society figuring out what the web should be and our role is to stand up for those core values that the web was built on, which includes transparency."
Interested parties can download Lightbeam from the Mozilla Firefox add-on store.
