Mozilla Launches Tool to Expose Online Tracking

Non-profit body The Mozilla Foundation, developer of the Firefox browser, has launched an add-on tool to provide a real-time visualization of web sites tracking users' online behavior.

The organization says that like Firefox the new Collusions tool aims to help people 'take control' of their online lives. Developed in partnership with private funding initiative the Ford Foundation, the software is designed to reveal which sites that have created cookies in a user's browser, and highlight the advertisers who track behavior across multiple sites. Additionally, the tool demonstrates how tracked data creates a spider-web of interaction between companies and other trackers.

In a statement, the company says: 'If you haven't realized it yet, companies are tracking you across most of the sites you visit daily on the web. It's quite likely that these companies know more about you than your government. Some of them might even know more about you than your best friends.' The tool will advise users on how to turn off such tracking.

Mozilla CEO Gary Kovacs comments: 'Collusion will allow us to pull back the curtain and provide users with more information about the growing role of third parties, how data drives most web experiences, and ultimately how little control we have over that experience and our loss of data.'

Web sites: www.mozilla.org and www.fordfoundation.org .