Skip to main content

Discover what’s tracking your Internet activity with these Web apps

protect yourself onlineThere’s an app for everything–including protecting yourself from apps. Sure, the cyclical nature of giving something access to your information in order to see what else you’ve given your information to is enough to make anyone think that we’re firmly caught in the Internet’s crosshairs and it’s too late to get out unscathed.

And these aren’t exactly fail-safe options. Electronic Frontier Federation’s activism director Rainey Reitman explains that studies have proven these types of applications only work if you know how to use them–what’s more is that you’re never 100-percent safe. “What consumers need is a simple way to protect themselves online that doesn’t involve finding, installing, and maintaining a slew of third party apps,” she says.

Until that day comes, we think it’s better to educate yourself and get proactive rather than stay complacent. Check out these applications that go under the hood to reveal what’s going on when you’re scouring the Web. 

Reppler

Like other applications, Reppler has to be given access to your various social networking sites before it can assess what they are doing to your reputation. And accordingly, it’s going to want to be made privy to what feel like personal details. If you’re able to surmount that mental hurdle, however, you can get a revealing look at what your social sites say about you.

repplerReppler offers insight into what sort of impression you’re making via Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and on other sites. It also shows you what contacts overlap across various sites—important information if you try to keep somewhat separate online identities. Our favorite feature is Reppler’s inappropriate content warning–which in our case, flagged a reference to drinking beer. 

ghosteryGhostery

Ghostery tracks what’s tracking you. The free application describes itself as “your window into the invisible web,” and via a widget installed on your browser, surfaces everything going on behind the scenes. Every time you visit a site, a number will appear next to the Ghostery icon on the right-hand side of the omnibox. Hover over it, and you’ll get a list of other sites that are taking stock of your activity.

What’s great about Ghostery is that it doesn’t just offer this data, but also helps you determine what to do about it. You can learn more about the companies and block scripts and images from them as well as delete local shared objects. It’s a quick and painless download, and the app walks you through set-up so you can customize the tool for your own use.

disconnectmeDisconnect.me

Disconnect.me functions quite a bit like Ghostery, albeit with less personalization. However, instead of reporting the third parties that are tracking you, Disconnect goes right ahead and disables them from the get-go. It also installs a browser icon that shows you the number of sites it’s blocking for you. You can also unblock sites if you choose simply by clicking on them.

Disconnect.me has a tool dedicated to disconnecting from Facebook as well. If all that frictionless sharing is starting to get to you, this app can ease your pain by disabling Facebook from tracking your outside Web activity.

Unsubscribe

Unwanted spam is the burden of every online consumer out there. Unsubscribe wants to lighten that load while also giving you access to a variety of tools to monitor your Web behavior. Its social analyzer option puts in plain sight everything you’ve approved and subscribed to, and warns you if the application seems iffy. When you remove something, it also prompts you to tell your friends who are using it.

unsubscribe
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Editors' Recommendations

Molly McHugh
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Before coming to Digital Trends, Molly worked as a freelance writer, occasional photographer, and general technical lackey…
Twitter accused of selling your phone number to advertisers
Twitter logo in white stacked on top of a blue stylized background with the Twitter logo repeating in shades of blue.

Twitter stands accused of selling users' contact information to advertisers without their knowledge and will pay a $150 million fine as part of a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

According to NPR, the settlement was announced on Wednesday and was reached in response to accusations that Twitter gathered its users' phone numbers and email addresses (ostensibly only for security reasons), but then sold access to that information to advertisers without informing its users.

Read more
What’ll happen to your WhatsApp account if you don’t agree to new privacy policy
WhatsApp

WhatsApp recently announced it would be changing its privacy policy, in a move that has many users worried about how much of their data will be shared with WhatsApp's parent company, Facebook. Now, the service has revealed what will happen to the accounts of users who don't agree to the new policy by the May 15 deadline.

TechCrunch contacted WhatsApp for more details on what would happen to users' accounts if they didn't agree to the new privacy policy. It reports that WhatsApp will "slowly ask" its users to agree to the new privacy changes, warning that they need to do so to continue having full access to the app's features. Users who decline to accept the new policy will be able to continue using the app for a few weeks, but only in a limited way. “For a short time, these users will be able to receive calls and notifications, but will not be able to read or send messages from the app,” the company told TechCrunch.

Read more
Tweet previews aren’t showing up in WhatsApp messages
WhatsApp messaging app

WhatsApp users attempting to send Twitter links to friends on Tuesday had a different experience than usual.

Tweets previews, which before had been a standard feature, are no longer showing on messaging app WhatsApp. App owner Facebook blamed a glitch in Twitter's API.

Read more