National Tracking Ecologies

Digital Methods Summer School 2013

Anne, Esther, Astrid, Sarieta, Marc, Bev, Gabriele, Lonneke, Carolin, Marta.

Research Problem

•  Knowing that there is a multiplicity of trackers collecting data online, can we detect specific national tracking ecologies?

•  Original research question: What is the extensiveness of tracking per country?

•  What does it tell us about the global and local tracking economies?

The dataset

•  Special dataset from Ghostery: trackers encountered from country location (anonymised IP to geo data, we only received country name).

•  Date range: May 2013

•  Limitation I: Based on Ghostery data (specific population, uneven country distribution).

•  Limitation II: Ghostery does not detect all trackers, main coverage North America & Europe.

•  Limitation III: IP address possibly does not correspond to real location of user (proxy usage).

•  New research question: Which trackers do users encounter & potentially participate in when surfing from specific countries?

Overview

•  44 Countries.

•  Based on IP to geo service.

•  1465 unique trackers found.

•  All countries have more than 1000 trackers (except Malta & Cyprus).

•  Draw on Ghostery categories: ads, tracker/beacon, analytics, privacy, widget.

•  Focus on: (1) overall tracker encounters & (2) widgets.

•  Most prominent and unique trackers encounter per country.

Trackers per country

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Widgets per country minus top level

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

Un!ed StatesUn!ed Kingdom

TurkeyTaiwan

Sw!zerlandSweden

SpainSloveniaSlovakia

Saudi ArabiaRussia

RomaniaPortugal

PolandNorway

NetherlandsMexico

MaltaLuxembourg

L!huaniaLatviaKoreaJapan

ItalyIsrael

IrelandIceland

HungaryGreece

GermanyFrance

FinlandE"onia

EgyptDenmark

Cze# RepublicCyprus

ChinaCanada

BulgariaBrazil

Bel$umAu"ria

Argentina

Top 10 trackers per country

Ad842.777.785

Analytics634.301.927

Tra%er259.261.245

Widget779.939.192

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Top 10 trackersper country

LEGEND

NON COUNTRY SPECIFIC

COUNTRY SPECIFIC

Top 10 widgetsper country

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•  Distribution: Top 10 trackers make up around 50% of all tracker encounters.

•  Users from all countries participate in global tracking economies.

•  Few unique trackers, but several specific national trackers per country.

Key findings

Dataset shifted research focus:

1.  From identifying trackers specific to countries to participation of local Ghostery users in global tracking economies.

2.  From studying unique to studying specific trackers: global ecologies & economies.

3.  From focus on tracking companies to tracker encounters.

Conclusion

Thank you.

Images by •  http://www.flickr.com/photos/lennyjpg/ •  http://unproductive.tumblr.com/

Thanks Alexei!