Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica Scandal has shocked many companies and has been on everyone’s minds, however we must also consider that it is not only Facebook who are tracking online activity. While Reddit has advertisements running on their website, users can install third-party extensions to stop the company from tracking them.
LifeHacker looked up a page in the new Reddit which displayed all of its options for tracking being set to “On” by default. The personalization page states that these settings won’t be applied to ads served by other companies on Reddit. The company has pointed out that the Digital Advertising Alliance and Networking Advertising Initiative are two sites that you can visit to opt out of personalized advertising.
It is recommended to enable Do Not Track opting in your browser for extra privacy. Reddit also noted in the privacy policy that that company ignores these settings.
We can use a number of mitigation techniques such as the use of browser extensions to avoid tracking. You will still need to install a legitimate browser extension that will stop the ads completely. LifeHacker has suggested that you create multiple accounts to confuse Reddit’s algorithm that builds the advertising profile of you.
A post from earlier suggested the New UI features many ways to gather data on how people use the site.
…the new UI … features session replay tracking everywhere (recording of your mouse movements, keystrokes, and how you interact with the website), as evident by its use of the mousemove JavaScript event listener for the entire page.
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