There is a vast number of trackers, which gather information about users’ activities online. For all intents and purposes, we have grown accustomed to online service providers, marketing agencies, and analytical companies tracking our every mouse click, our social posts, browser and streaming services history. The collected data can be used for improving their user interfaces or the overall user experience, or to personalize ads.
There exist various types of trackers meant for collecting different types of information: advertising (AdAgency) trackers, analytics (WebAnalytics) trackers, and so on. Most of these are largely used on websites and inside applications. There are more versatile trackers too, used on websites, inside applications, and even in e-mail. This article describes one of these tracker types: web beacons. We demonstrate what tracking systems’ and companies’ web beacons our security products (anti-tracking browser extensions and antispam technology) detect most often.
What web beacons are
Web beacons, or web bugs, also known as tracker pixels or spy pixels, among other names, are tracking elements used on web pages, inside applications and in e-mail for checking that the user has accessed certain content (opened an e-mail or visited a web page). Their main purpose is to collect statistics and build analytical reports on the user’s activities.
Web beacons on websites track visitors. Analytical marketing agencies or website owners themselves can use these to measure how well certain content or promotional campaigns performed, or how their audiences responded. Some websites use tracker pixels as watermarks for their content, for example, to track down illegal copies.
The main purpose of web beacons in e-mail, just as those on websites, is to count users who interact ..
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