Using a Firefox extension called Lightbeam, you can see a list or chart visualization of every first and third party sites you interact with as you browse the Web.
Curious as to which websites I was unknowingly interacting with, I closed my Chrome app, downloaded Firefox, and downloaded two add-ons: AdBlock, and Lightbeam. For the next 20 minutes, I would monitor my browsing behaviour and track which sites I was interacting with.
My first stop was Aritzia, a Canadian women's fashion retailer. I spent ten minutes browsing the sale section since I got a newsletter e-mail earlier that day promoting the last day of the sale. During my stay at Aritzia, I scrolled through seemingly endless pairs of designer jeans, merino wool sweaters, pima cotton tank tops, added several items to my cart, abandoned my cart, and never looked away. What I don't recall, however, is being aware of interacting with any third party sites. Lightbeam was able to pick up 14 sites within those 10 minutes. Of the 14, only 5 seemed recognizable because they all had the word "google" in them, except, of course, for facebook.com.
Seeing facebook.com on Lightbeam inspired me to visit my own Facebook account. From there, I made my second trip to Sole Collector, where I read up on a meme-related article about a fashionable kid named Daniel. I found the link on my timeline through "liking" the Complex Facebook page, Looking at the data collected from my visit to Sole Collector, one out of the 19 sites I interacted with stood out, "champssports.com". So, I made the mental connection: a sneaker-related news outlet and a footwear interacting with an athletics store made sense, but I still have yet to figure out exactly how and whether or not I was supposed to notice.
The next ten minutes were spent in a similar fashion, hopping from blog to blog from either Twitter or Facebook. Third party sites common to most of the sites that I visited included anything google related. Google-analytics.com reigned supreme for the most sites connected.
On the reverse, here is a list of sites that had the most third-party sites connected to it. Bloomberg is a business news outlet, Hypebeast is for fashion, Complex for pop culture, and Sole Collector for sneakers.
At the end of my journey, I entertianed the idea of switching "Tracking Protection" to ON on my Lightbeam add-on, but decided against it. I love Google and I think their spidering technique is ultimately beneficial. Another feature that you can do on Lightbeam includes the ability to toggle the features in both grid view and graph view so that you can highlight the connections, what kind of sites you're interacting with, whether blocked, watched, first party, or third party. For added protection, you can even block the sites. With increasing demand for privacy and security in a data driven world, Lightbeam is a great tool for those interested in protecting the way they browse.