Syllabus Lesson 45 of 156 · Inside a tracker (in the practice world)
Inside a tracker (in the practice world)

Ethics

Why it matters You now understand how trackers join visits, recognise browsers and build profiles. Knowing how something works comes with a choice about how to use it. This lesson is about that choice.

Everything in this module happened to Sam, who does not exist, on shops that do not exist. That is on purpose. Reading AdCo's log about Sam is like reading a stranger's shopping receipts over their shoulder: fine in a training exercise with an actor, not fine with a real person. Doing the same to real people, without their clear and informed agreement, harms them, even when each step looks small.

What tracking can do to real people

  • Reveal what they have not shared. A pregnancy, an illness or money trouble can show up in ads on a shared family computer or phone.
  • Change what they are offered. Profiles can steer prices, loans or job adverts, sometimes unfairly.
  • Leak. Data that is collected can be breached, sold or handed over, long after anyone remembers why it was kept.
  • Follow people who want to stay hidden, such as someone leaving an abusive home.

Informed consent: a person clearly understands what will be collected and why, and freely agrees, with an equally easy way to say no. A pre-ticked box or a hidden setting is not informed consent.

What to do with what you learned

  • As a user: use a browser with partitioning and tracking protection, and the settings from lesson 31 (Module 5).
  • As a developer: collect less, avoid embedding trackers you do not need, and prefer cookie-free analytics (lesson 77 in Module 13 shows how).
  • If you find a privacy problem in someone else's product: report it to them privately and give them time to fix it, rather than testing it on real people.

Never use these techniques to follow real people or to probe real sites. The practice world exists so you can understand tracking deeply without hurting anyone.

Recap

  • The labs used a pretend person on pretend sites so no one was harmed.
  • Real tracking can expose, steer, leak and endanger.
  • Use what you learned to protect people: as a user, as a developer and as a reporter of problems.

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