Sick of targeted ads? Mozilla has brought the internet one weird trick

Track THIS, a collaboration between mschf internet studios and Mozilla’s Firefox browser, provides a unique way of concealing your data from advertisers: it bombs your browser history with 100 web pages designed to fit a specific character, effectively making your data worthless.

The end result? Advertisers, and everyone else who wants to use your data to build a profile about you, will instead get a bunch of garbled web history that identifies you as a doomsday prepper, hipster or influencer, among a few others.

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“These trackers and these websites really commoditize you, and they don’t really make you feel like a person,” Daniel Greenberg, director of strategy and distribution for mschf, told Vice in a phone call. “So we wanted to do something visceral that makes the user feel like they’re in control again.”

Despite its release by Mozilla, anyone can use the Track THIS website and open up a terrifying amount of tabs like so much electronic chaff, throwing off your favourite website’s tracking cookies and ensuring security through superior firepower in your battle against ads.

If you use adblockers, you won’t notice a thing, but as free online media depends on ads I prefer to go natural in my approach to the internet. I haven’t noticed a direct change yet, but as advertising profiles of me change, I’m expecting to start noticing a swing towards ads flogging me my own yacht or even a vineyard in the near future.

It’s a novel way to escape being watched on the internet, and makes me feel better about the constant angst that everywhere online is watching what i get upto, but it’s also a pretty neat way to have a look and get a glance into a different persona. Rich person me is called Lance. He’s happy to meet you.