From: AdAge
Coders Compete at Manhattan Event to Hack the Trackers
Despite a stream of revelations about National Security Administration data tracking, consumers in the U.S. haven’t exactly embraced online privacy tools.
Ghostery, a subsidiary of Evidon which offers a browser extension that exposes tracking technologies and allows people to opt-out from them, aims to change that.
The company corralled a roomful of coders tasked with crafting new tools that highlight digital data tracking on a recent Saturday in WeWork Lounge, a co-work space on the edge of New York City’s Chinatown.
Winning teams developed applications that make data tracking more tangible to everyday users. But it was a long time getting there.
“I do a lot of managing and I like to write code,” said Reed O’Brien, principal at tech consultancy Koansys (above, right), explaining he’d rather be writing computer lingo than in business meetings. Hence, his decision to spend his Saturday at a hackathon. “I figured I could come and write code for 12 hours.”
He didn’t have quite that much time. Hack the Trackers contestants had around eight hours to come up with ideas for privacy tools then build preliminary versions of them.
At the end of the day teams presented their final work as coders, Ghostery staffers and event judges nibbled on hors d’oeuvres and sipped an electric-blue vodka concoction inspired by Ghostery’s azure logo.
Visualize privacy
One group built a tool that visualized the number and types of ads served during a browser session. The application launches a vibrantly colored web page cluttered with squares and rectangles representing actual ads, each in a hue attributed to the company that served the ad.
Another team offered a service that alerts people when online registration forms collect data the user isn’t aware is being gathered. If people have auto-fill enabled in their browsers, it is possible for publishers or ecommerce sites to grab auto-fill information even if registration forms don’t show fields for that information.
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