Trackography

When we access websites, third parties are able to track our online behaviour, aggregate our data, link it to other data collected about us and subsequently create profiles. These profiles tell a story about us – which may or may not be true - and can include our political beliefs, gender, sexual orientation, economic status, habits, interests, affiliations and much more. And while this might all appear to be harmless, we largely have very little control over how and when our data is collected, how our profiles are created, whether they are accurate, who they are subsequently shared with, who has access to them, what they are used for, where they are stored and for how long. The global data industry has been very opaque... until now. Trackography illustrates which companies track our data when we read the news online, which countries our data travels to and how our data is handled everytime we access a media website within a period of time. We developed Trackography to increase transparency about the data collection industry. We hope it will start a discussion on unseen and unconsented data collection and on the politics of data. Come to our lecture, learn about Trackography and help us track the trackers!