What is Cover Your Tracks?
Cover Your Tracks is a research project aimed at uncovering the tools and techniques used by online trackers and evaluating the effectiveness of privacy add-ons. The project gathers information about the configuration and version details of users' operating systems, browsers, and plug-ins, and compares this data to a database of configurations from many other internet users. This allows the project to generate a uniqueness score, which indicates how easily identifiable a user might be while surfing the web In 2015, the Cover Your Tracks project was upgraded to include a feature for testing the performance of tracker-blocking tools. Millions of internet users employ privacy add-ons, such as AdBlock, Ghostery, and Disconnect, to block trackers. The new version of Cover Your Tracks researches how well these add-ons protect users from invasive tracking by simulating the loading of a visible ad that performs tracking, an invisible script that performs tracking, and a site that appears to be a tracker but actually has committed to honor Do Not Track The project also analyzes the uniqueness of a user's browser fingerprint, which can make them vulnerable to tracking even if their privacy add-ons are working effectively. Cover Your Tracks generates a report for each user, detailing their tracker protections and browser fingerprint, and the anonymous results from these tests are included in the project's larger research report
Highlights
- Browser fingerprinting analysis to determine how easily a user can be identified online
- Tracker blocker testing to evaluate the effectiveness of privacy add-ons in blocking various types of tracking
- Generation of personalized reports for users, including information on their tracker protections and browser uniqueness
- Contribution of anonymous user data to the project's larger research efforts
Features
Privacy