What is Cross-Site Tracking?

In this blog, you will learn what is cross-site tracking and how to disable tracking on your internet browser.

Whenever you visit any website or a specific page, you often come across different advertisements that exactly match your search history. It mostly happens because websites and applications track your online activities to improve your experience on their platform. This practice also contributes to making web browsing more relevant using the targeted advertisements.

The whole process of tracking users’ browsing history and serving accurate advertisements is known as cross-site tracking.

The benefit of tracking is that it provides faster, relevant, and accurate results that might interest users. However, tracking also has some downsides because it costs at the cost of privacy.

Nevertheless, you can disable or prevent this tracking feature on your internet browser following a series of quick and simple steps.

What is Cross-Site Tracking?

It is a process that happens when you browse from one website to another. During your entire browsing session, some trackers follow you and keep a record of your browsing history, including your most visited websites, products, and pages. These trackers save this data to serve you with targeted advertisements.

The main purpose of this tracking ability is to help websites create better advertisement campaigns. It is responsible for showing you product ads that you just looked at on a different page or website.

What Happens When You Disable Tracking on your browser?

By disabling tracking on your browser, you will stop trackers from recording and sharing your browsing information with different websites that you visit.

How Does Cross-Site Tracking Work?

The tracking process doesn’t involve any hard and fast rules to work. Various websites that you visit via your browser have trackers or cookies, mainly to record your online activities to improve your overall user experience.

These trackers also follow you when you switch tabs, and there is no limit to what’s being stored. These trackers can also share your stored data with third-party organizations without you knowing.

How to Prevent Cross-Site Tracking

Indeed, the tracking feature, when integrated with a Net Promoter Score survey, becomes a powerful tool for advertisement purposes. It helps websites in providing more customer-centric experiences. However, website tracking is also considered a user privacy invasion with increased security risks. Therefore, developers now provide options like block or disable to prevent tracking on a browser.

How to Disable Tracking on Safari

If you’re using the Safari browser, you can easily turn off the tracking option on your Mac and iOS devices. Here’s how to do it:

On Mac

• On your Mac, head to the Safari app and click on Safari > Preferences > Privacy
• Select “Prevent cross-site tracking.”
• Done.

On iOS

• Head to Settings.
• Click where you see “Safari” in the list.
• Under the “Privacy & Security” tab, enable the “Prevent Cross-Site Tracking” button.

How to Disable Tracking on Google Chrome

You can also disable tracking on the Chrome browser. The only thing that you need to know is Chrome settings doesn’t offer any button that says prevent cross-site tracking; instead, you can click on the “Do not track” button. Here’s how to do it:

On PC

• Open Chrome browser.
• Open the menu by clicking the vertical three dots in the top right corner.
• Head to Settings” > “Privacy and security” and > “Cookies and other site data.”
• Enable the “Do not track” option, and you’re done.

On Android

• Open Chrome and head to the menu by clicking the three dots.
• Click on Settings.
• Click on “Privacy and security.”
• Turn on the “Do not track” option.

How to Prevent Tracking on Firefox

• Open your Firefox browser.
• Click on the hamburger icon (three lines).
• Click on “Options.”
• Select “Privacy & Security.”
• Under the option of “Enhanced Tracking Protection, click on the Custom option. Select cookies, cross-site, and social media trackers.

• The changes will have now been applied.

What Are the Benefits of site Tracking?

Since many users are now demanding privacy online, they prefer to prevent tracking by stopping trackers from monitoring their information and online activities.

But, the tracking option also offers a series of benefits to businesses with multiple products and websites.

These trackers allow businesses to better understand customer demands, including product preferences.

With the help of tracking results, organizations better plan their pricing and advertisement strategies. Overall, the tracking feature helps businesses improve their overall customer experience with websites, products, and web pages.

Is Cross-Site Tracking Safe?

Tracking possesses a lot of benefits for big enterprises. The tracking feature helps understand various facets of customer behavior and their needs. However, it is not wrong to say that tracking can be extremely dangerous in terms of security and privacy.

The main security risk with the tracking feature is that it records your online activities to a greater extent. The worst part is that most of the information is recorded without your consent.

The main issue is that these pages can send your data to any third-party site. These third-party websites could misuse your information and cause you harm in some cases.

A hacker can access the tracking feature to monitor and record your activities, including sensitive information like passwords and other details.

Why Should I Turn On Prevent Cross-Site Tracking Option?

You should enable the tracking prevention option because it stops websites with trackers from recording your activities, and it is great for your online privacy.

Conclusion

Putting your security as a priority, we try to come up with the most relevant security solutions.

Websites use cross-site tracking to personalize your experience. It helps the websites to perform better.  However, you should have the right to consent in the first place.