Even the Ad Industry Doesn't Know Who's Tracking You

jfruh writes "The Internet advertising industry is keen to stave off government privacy rules and opt-in-only browsers by loudly proclaiming its adherence to a self-imposed code of conduct. Yet a little digging shows that even "self-regulated" advertisers link to services that link to other services that nobody's really sure what they do. That's why, for instance, when you visit a page on the Sears website, your web browsing behavior is being collected by a company that sells ringtones and won't return emails asking about their privacy policy."

Comments

Oh...

[WizardFusion]

And that is why Ghostery and other such tools should be used until all tracking is banned.

Re:Oh, yeah

[Trepidity]

From their whois record, ru4.com claims to be X Plus One, an "enterprise" data-analytics company with a lot of finance-sector clients. So it seems reasonably plausible to me that Chase is contracting with them.

I don't get why large companies don't bring these things at least under their own subdomains, though. Even if you're having something hosted by a third party, it's not hard to set up its DNS at foo.chase.com.

Install Collusion

[vettemph]

Install Collusion add-on into your Firefox browser and monitor it while surfing. After visiting a few web sites you will see links forming to ten other sites. etc...
It becomes apparent that everyone is telling everyone else about you.

looks like this...
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2012/4/13/1334309538603/Collusion1.jpg