How does it work?

Virtually every website on the Web uses Cookies - they are essential to modern web applications.
When you visit a website, your browser allows it to store a cookie on your computer. That cookie allows the website to "remember" you - but it can also be used to track you!

There are 3 components to a Cookie Tracker:

1. One or more small files containing information about you, stored on your computer.
2. A web server that listens for requests that include the cookie and records information about each request, which may include the "refering" web page URL, your IP address, the time of the request, which browser you use, etc.
3. The HTTP protocol (the rules that govern communication on the Web), which dictates that cookies stored on your computer should be silently sent back to the website that issued them, every time you make a new request to that website.

Using a Cookie Tracker

• No action required -- just by visiting this page (or virtually any page on the web!) you are being tracked with cookies.
  
  • View data tracked about you on UTrackIt
  • View the raw Cookies stored by UTrackIt
• Visit the Tracker's Database to view the cookie tracking data collected so far: Tracker's Database
• To view the cookies stored on your computer by this website:
  1. Open your browser Preferences or Settings
  2. Look for Privacy options
  3. Look for "Show Cookies" or similar
  4. Search for the site's domain name
  There are good Cookie Manager plugins available for most browsers - these provide tools to allow you inspect your cookies more thoroughly, and provide fine-grain control for managing your cookies.

Protecting your privacy from Cookie Trackers

Most browsers will allow you to disable cookies. Try it - you will find that this breaks most websites, and certainly means that web applications (logins, shopping carts, etc.) will not work.

Disabling "3rd party cookies" is often a good idea, with very few negative reprecussions, and can substantially reduce the amount of cookie tracking.

Aside from that, here are a few steps you can take to improve your browsing privacy:

• Use "incognito" or "private" browsing when practical -- cookies from these sessions are not stored.
• Log out from websites after you are done -- staying logged in to a web site vastly increase the type and amount of data about you that can be tracked while you are browsing on other sites.
• Clear house -- delete all your cookies once in a while. The only impact this has is that websites will "forget" you -- you will be logged out from any sites you were logged in to.

WARNING

Use of tracking cookies without permission is certainly of questionable ethics and may be against the law in some jurisdictions. The tools and code presented here are intended for educational purposes only!