A little bit of my privacy back... thank you!

This CNet Article caught my attention on how to see how much companies like Facebook and Google are making off me in advertising each year. I'm assuming that it's referring to the Google and Facebook ads down the side of the screen that I click on. These are 'Pay Per Click' advertising, where Facebook, Google or whoever is hosting the advert gets Xc or $X each time anyone clicks!



A little reluctant to install another web browser Add On, I had a look. PrivacyFix (available for Chrome and Firefox) looks pretty straight forward, and it is. More than telling you how much these companies are earning from you, it walks you through turning off their tracking methods, clearly explaining what the tracking method does and precisely how to stop it.

As can be seen on the screen shot here (above), it's taken me into my facebook and is telling me EXACTLY what to change! It does the same for Google too!

I'm also a little worried about how many sites it says are tracking me on the screen shot right (each icon on the right of the screen shot is a website that tracks my computer!) and will have to have a good look through this at some stage. The sites that are tracking me are just the cookies that are stored on my computer, most of which I will have authorised, but a lot will have placed themselves there for one reason or another, either way, this is a user friendly way of seeing it and gives us the ability to decide if we want them tracking us or not.

Each screen is also accompanied by a video to give a little more detail as to what you're looking at. This is really well presented for all people no matter what your level of technical expertise is.