Mozilla Lightbeam Shows Users Whose Watching Them Online

The new Mozilla Lightbeam browser extension is the perfect piece of software for web users who are paranoid about being tracked online by companies, ad agencies, and other online entities.

The new feature, offered free of charge, checks on your digital footprint and then reports back and snoops.

The browser plugin for Firefox promises to “illuminate the inner workings of the web.”It works to uncover which third-party companies are watching your online activity. Typically those companies include high-end brands and advertisers. Those organizations typically want to share your data or directly targets ads based on your web history usage.

In a public statement released on Friday Mozilla writes:

“As a part of Lightbeam, we’re creating a big-picture view of how tracking works on the Internet, and how third-party sites are connected to multiple other sites.”

Users can take advantage of interactive visualizations in the form of graphs, clocks and lists. Users can sift through collected data records to see the sources of images and other information.

The company says “The visualization grows with every site you visit and every request made from your browser. In addition to the graph view, you can also see your data in a clock view to examine connections over a 24-hour period or in a List view to drill down into individual sites.”

You can download Mozilla Light beam browser plugin here.

While the program doesn’t aim to stop online snooping from advertisers, brands, and other entities, it does leave them more accountable for what they do with that action. Think of Mozilla Lightbeam as a consumer friendly checks and balances program.

Do you think a better understanding of internet snooping on the consumer level can help make advertisers and brands more responsible out of necessity?