Tracking

What is tracking?

Tracking, targeting and profile building all fall under the general term "web analysis," which describes the collection and analysis of website visitor behavior. The most common goal is to analyze the user behavior on one's own site.

• Which page did the user land on?
• How did the user navigate through the website?
• What content was the user interested in?

With this information, operators can optimize their websites, online shops can adapt their offerings and search engines can optimize their results.

Why is tracking problematic?

At first glance, web analysis appears to be beneficial to both operators and users. In practice, the user data is not only analyzed for the operator's own website, but also forwarded to others. If you search for a trip to France on www.ichBucheEineReise.de for instance, advertisements for tour operators in France might appear on another website that deals with a completely different topic.

So far, this practice seems harmless. But let's say you search the Internet for information on teeth implants and supplemental dental insurance, after which your health insurance inquiry only yields very expensive premiums. Or you purchase something in an online shop that demands payment in advance, because you inquired beforehand on another site about credit alternatives.

Technically speaking, such scenarios are certainly feasible. How far these website operators are willing to go to implement them is difficult to judge, however. Data privacy experts even view tracking for purposes of the operator's own site as the collection of personal data.

How can you protect yourself?

Regardless whether you want to simply avoid divulging personal data, or you believe the above scenarios are conceivable, you can protect yourself against profile building and tracking, at least to some extent. While there are ways to surf the net anonymously, they are much less convenient.

On the other hand, even simple changes to surfing behavior or browser configurations can help you surf a little more anonymously and provide data collectors less fodder.

We'd like to outline two alternatives here:

Search engines

Big search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo gather a wealth of data (including personal data) for their own analysis or to make it available to third-parties. A much higher level of anonymity is available with search engines such as

• https://www.ixquick.com/deu/ [1] [2]
  a so-called meta search engine that submits your inquires anonymously to other search engines, guaranteeing a maximum of privacy.
  The operator is a Netherlands-based company.
• https://metager.de/ [2]
  a search engine that submits your inquiries anonymously to multiple search engines.
  The site is operated as a joint effort between the non-profit Association for the Promotion of Search Engine Technology and Free Access to Knowledge (SUMA e.V.) and the Leibniz University in Hannover.
• https://startpage.com/deu/ [1]
  search engine that submits your inquires anonymously to other search engines. For those who still want Google search results.
  Run by the same operator as IXQUICK.

Cookies

Cookies allow information about you to be saved on a computer and called up at a later point. They are a helpful tool for saving website-specific user settings; in other words, they provide a way to know if a user is logged on or to track the contents of the shopping basket.

Cookies can also track if you want to travel to France or have searched for information about dental implants. The one who sets the cookie determines how long the information is retained.

The following settings can be used with little impact on surf comfort: delete cookies after the browser is closed and reject third-party cookies (cookies from somewhere other than the current website).

• In Firefox, the cookie settings can be found in the menu under Options/Privacy. Under History, change the setting to: Firefox will use custom settings for history. Then under "Accept cookies from sites" select "never." Next, under "Choose how long cookies are allowed to be stored," select "Keep until I close Firefox."
• In Internet Explorer, select Tools, then Internet options. Select the Privacy tab, and under Settings, move the slider to the top to block all cookies. Then check the box "Always allow session cookies."