Numerous internet users face continuous violations of their privacy rights in this digital age. While enjoying the benefits of the internet, people often remain unaware of how their personal data is being collected, shared and used by various websites, advertisers and tech companies. A former Google engineer, Tim Libert, developed a new search engine, WebXray, that helps uncover privacy violations, specifically online website tracking.
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How Does WebXray Work?
When a search is performed on WebXray, it crawls all requested websites to inventory cookies, pixels, fingerprinting scripts, and other tracking techniques used. The search results then highlight if any personal data like searches, locations, or contact details are transmitted without consent to advertisers and data brokers.
More advanced features also risk-assess websites based on sensitive topics they discuss. This allows users, advocates, and lawyers to discover potential privacy policy violations for investigation and legal action.
Key Features of WebXray Search Engine
Some of the key features and benefits of WebXray are below:
1. Browser Privacy Analysis
For any provided URL, WebXray examines all tracking tools deployed without obtaining users’ affirmative consent through cookie notices. This includes identifying the third-party tracking services involved and the specific data disclosed.
2. Risk Profiling of Websites
Some website topics like health, finances or children are afford more legal protection. WebXray can determine if a site asks for sensitive personal details or targets related keyword searches inappropriately.
3. Timeline of Privacy Changes
The search history is retained to allow analysis of how entities modify their privacy practices over time. This helps establish intent and response to investigations/litigations.
4. Classification of Trackers and Data Recipients
Major advertising networks, analytics firms, social shares, and data intercepting are categorized. Users can then restrict scans to a particular company to oversee their compliance more narrowly.
5. Litigation Support Functions
Features like bulk search queries, advanced filtering and customizable reports help lawyers and regulators build strong technical evidence and strategies against suspected violators.
6. Education and Advocacy Resources
Whitepapers and research studies produced help educate people about online privacy issues. Narratives illustrate the real impact and highlight the need for legal/policy strengthening to establish digital civil liberties.
Tim Libert’s Motivation to Build WebXray
As a researcher, Tim Libert found many health and porn websites were illegally sharing user data through cookies with Google and other third parties. He joined Google to improve privacy but faced challenges due to its massive scale and priorities. This motivated him to build WebXray to uncover privacy violations and help regulators take action.
Making Privacy Violations Visible
WebXray provides a basic free version for users, while a premium version aimed at regulators and lawyers reveals details of forensic privacy violations. Libert aims to help class action lawsuits against big tech like Google by uncovering illicit data collection at scale. Additionally, WebXray’s tagline ‘Privacy is inevitable’ reflects Libert’s optimism that it will speed up privacy law enforcement.
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