Advertising Assignment

Screengrab of the page visited with the most number of trackers, curtesy of Disconnect

Using the Disconnect extension, I was surprised to see how many third-party trackers were connected even on a government website (canada.ca). I expected civic sites to have minimal tracking compared to commercial platforms, but the visualization showed a large network of analytics and external services still being contacted. While some trackers were blocked, many connections were still present, including services related to data analytics and content delivery. This made me realize that tracking is not limited to social media (shoes and shapewear) or e-commerce sites ( vitamins and shampoo )— it is embedded across most of the web. It also raised questions for me about how user data is collected and whether visitors are always aware of how extensively their browsing activity is being monitored, even on trusted public websites. Many people would be under the impression that a government website would be more protected, but infact it had the most trackers.