Mozilla, the maker of Firefox, has announced a wide range of new programs that are aiming to discover the scope and depth of certain data tracking services that are being used by Meta, the parent company of Facebook.
Mozila's The Facebook Pixel Hunt Research
According to the story by TechRadar, Mozilla's very own privacy-first data-sharing platform, led by Rally and called The Facebook Pixel Hunt, will be conducted along with an American non-profit data-driven journalism organization known as The Markup Team. The goal is to cover the ethics and total impact of technology on society.
Per the project's website, Facebook, as stated in its own privacy policy, could collect information about users across the web despite not having a Facebook account. In addition, a way that the platform tracks users is through a network of "pixels" installed on the sites that users are visiting.
Rally Launched in June 2021 as an Extension on Firefox
Mozilla initially launched Rally back in June 2021 as its own extension for the popular browser aiming to raise awareness of the value of the person's data. The data created through the extension will be used in order to support a number of studies.
Among the first ones included a study by Princeton University's Center for Information Technology Policy's news and misinformation regarding COVID-19 on digital services. The Stanford University Graduate School of Business has also done a study that focuses on how users consume news as well as the impact that ads have on consumers.
First Time Rally Partners with Non-Academia Organization
The Markup is said to be the very first time that Rally has partnered with an organization not coming from the academia. In addition, AdWeek notes that Rally product lead at Mozilla, Ted Han, gave a statement saying the world can't wait on platforms to do the right thing.
It was also stated that the partnership is looking to lead the way when it comes to providing new and critical ways of showing the reality of the internet by the people that are making it.
Read Also: Apple Developers Got $60 Billion in 2021 | In Total, Company Paid Developers $260 Billion
Increased Risk of Identity Theft
During this time of increased risk of identity theft, being able to protect one's online data has never been as important. Internet users are usually advised to be careful when it comes to their personal information and that they should use strong authentication and a VPN to help encrypt the communication channel.
According to TechRadar, Facebook has usually been criticized for the way that the company handles user data, with one of the larger incidents happening between 2013 all the way to 2016.
During that time, it was revealed that the company actually gave a British consulting firm called Cambridge Analytica access to the platform's users' data even without consent.
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This article is owned by Tech Times
Written by Urian B.
