II RESEARCH
What does unwanted archives contain, and how is it organized and connected together?
For this question I did take a look on an essential thing on the internet – Cookies. They are everywhere on the internet, starting from entering a website. Usually you get asked whether you want to accept essential cookies (1st party cookies) and/or (3rd party cookies). A lot of people – also me – use to just click the question away to reach the information, we actually want. So I click on: Accept them all. But where is the difference between 1st party and 3rd party cookies, and why are there no 2nd party cookies?
Cookies are stored in your browser, which is a quite comfortable thing. 1st party cookies are responsible to remember your activity on certain websites. If you are online shopping, for example. You put something in your basket and close the website, go somewhere else and when you are opening the website again, the item is still in the basket.
Also, they prevent you from logging in every time you are visiting a website – their function is to remember you.
3rd party cookies are more the devil ones. They are connected to advertising and are analytical cookies, which observe you while you are on a website. What are you looking at? Where did you come from and which device are you using? They allow to improve the target group of an advertising. But they also track you through your journey on the internet.
While you could disable 3rd party cookies, you often cannot disable 1st party cookies, because some provided services cannot be executed.
The most complicated question concerning cookies was: How to track the trackers?
There is a browser extension called “Lightbeam”, which is quite fancy to look at. It creates a spiderweb of every cookie – because the interesting thing is, there are a lot of websites, which are using the same cookies for advertising or marketing for instance.
One month this extension tracked every 1st and 3rd party cookie and connected them together.
Taking the raw data “Lightbeam” collected for me, it’s possible to create a canvas of every intersection and data point. I ran the extension for one month, and it collected 1832 cookies.
On the canvas on the left, I decided to hide the domain, in order to have this spiderweb. But at the bottom you can see an example of how it looked like. Looking at the results, you can see the size of internet you are using, and also the dominance of big tech companies. At the most black points of the canvas, you have Google, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.
This inspired me to take look at their dominance at the web and their services.
II RESEARCH
What does unwanted archives contain, and how is it organized and connected together?
For this question I did take a look at an essential thing on the internet – Cookies. They are everywhere on the internet, starting from entering a website. Usually you get asked whether you want to accept essential cookies (1st party cookies) and/or (3rd party cookies). A lot of people – also me – use to just click the question away to reach the information, we actually want. So I click on: Accept them all. But where is the difference between 1st party and 3rd party cookies, and why are there no 2nd party cookies?
Cookies are stored in your browser, which is a quite comfortable thing. 1st party cookies are responsible to remember your activity on certain websites. If you are online shopping, for example. You put something in your basket and close the website, go somewhere else and when you are opening the website again, the item is still in the basket.
Also, they prevent you from logging in every time you are visiting a website – their function is to remember you.
3rd party cookies are more the devil ones. They are connected to advertising and are analytical cookies, which observe you while you are on a website. What are you looking at? Where did you come from and which device are you using? They allow to improve the target group of an advertising. But they also track you through your journey on the internet.
While you could disable 3rd party cookies, you often cannot disable 1st party cookies, because some provided services cannot be executed.
The most complicated question concerning cookies was: How to track the trackers?
There is a browser extension called “Lightbeam”, which is quite fancy to look at. It creates a spiderweb of every cookie – because the interesting thing is, there are a lot of websites, which are using the same cookies for advertising or marketing for instance.
One month this extension tracked every 1st and 3rd party cookie and connected them together.
Taking the raw data “Lightbeam” collected for me, it’s possible to create a canvas of every intersection and data point. I ran the extension for one month, and it collected 1832 cookies.
On the canvas on the left, I decided to hide the domain, in order to have this spiderweb. But at the bottom you can see an example of how it looked like. Looking at the results, you can see the size of internet you are using, and also the dominance of big tech companies. At the most black points of the canvas, you have Google, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.
This inspired me to take look at their dominance at the web and their services.
Cookie | Dauer | Beschreibung |
---|---|---|
cookielawinfo-checkbox-advertisement | 1 year | Set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin, this cookie is used to record the user consent for the cookies in the "Advertisement" category . |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics | 11 months | This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics". |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional | 11 months | The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional". |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary | 11 months | This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary". |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others | 11 months | This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other. |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance | 11 months | This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance". |
viewed_cookie_policy | 11 months | The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data. |
Cookie | Dauer | Beschreibung |
---|---|---|
CONSENT | 2 years | YouTube sets this cookie via embedded youtube-videos and registers anonymous statistical data. |
Cookie | Dauer | Beschreibung |
---|---|---|
IDE | 1 year 24 days | Google DoubleClick IDE cookies are used to store information about how the user uses the website to present them with relevant ads and according to the user profile. |
test_cookie | 15 minutes | The test_cookie is set by doubleclick.net and is used to determine if the user's browser supports cookies. |
VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE | 5 months 27 days | A cookie set by YouTube to measure bandwidth that determines whether the user gets the new or old player interface. |
YSC | session | YSC cookie is set by Youtube and is used to track the views of embedded videos on Youtube pages. |
yt-remote-connected-devices | never | YouTube sets this cookie to store the video preferences of the user using embedded YouTube video. |
yt-remote-device-id | never | YouTube sets this cookie to store the video preferences of the user using embedded YouTube video. |