14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft is one of the large corporations that fight for users’ privacy, as its in-house Internet Explorer browser is being delivered with a Do Not Track option turned on by default.
But Microsoft actually has more user-tracking technologies than many other websites, including here retail sites, Ghostery developers claim.
Ghostery is a browser plug-in that allows users to identify third-party trackers on loaded websites, and offers support for the most popular browsers, such as Firefox, Safari, Google Chrome, Opera and even Internet Explorer.
According to The Register, Ghostery has found a total of 137 trackers on Microsoft’s website, while technology giants such as Apple and Samsung had only 107 and 66 such technologies, respectively. Retail websites Tesco and Dabs used 64 and 12 tracking systems.
“Tracking tags work to measure a user's interests to help match advertising on other sites and/or to help the site's publisher understand the audience that is drawn to their page. Some trackers, which we call behavioural beacons and analytics scripts, do only that - you can't even see them (they take up only a single pixel on the page),” Andy Kahl, director of consumer products at the Ghostery division of software developers Evidon, told The Reg.
Microsoft has recently claimed that users’ privacy needs to be protected when browsing the Internet, citing this as the main reason for the factory-enabled Do Not Track option in Internet Explorer 10.
Advertisers and companies across the world have called for Microsoft to turn off this tool in IE10, as such a feature blocks their systems from collecting user data and providing relevant advertisements.
Microsoft, on the other hand, has always claimed that users actually need such an option, showing absolutely no intention to change its Do Not Track policy.
Some companies have reacted angrily, with Yahoo! confirming that it plans to ignore Microsoft’s IE 10 DNT option on its websites.