A blacklight can reveal all sorts of secrets that are invisible to the naked eye.
So what if you had a virtual blacklight for the web—a way to shine an illuminating glow on the sites you visit and reveal what’s really happening with ’em beneath the surface?
My friend, have I got just the tool for you today.
Unearth all sorts of little-known tech treasures with my free Cool Tools newsletter from The Intelligence. A useful new discovery in your inbox every Wednesday!
Your on-demand web privacy scanner
The modern web is filled with all sorts of invisible tracking technology—and while most of it is far less worrisome than marketing-driven narratives would lead you to believe, there’s something to be said for at the very least being aware of what’s out there.
➜ That’s precisely where this week’s Cool Tool comes into play. It’s called, fittingly enough, Blacklight—and it’s a completely free resource for peeking behind the curtain of any site on this weary ol’ web of ours and seeing exactly what sorts of systems it has in place for observing you.
⌚ It’ll take you roughly 20 seconds to try:
- Just head over to the Blacklight website in whatever browser you prefer on any device in front of you.
- Type or paste any web address into the box at the top of the screen.
- And click or tap the Scan Site button to get started.
In a matter of moments, Blacklight will review the site you submitted and serve up a thorough list of all the tracking-related technology it finds lurking within it.
Here, for instance, is what Blacklight found for The Verge:
And here are its results for LinkedIn:
Here, meanwhile, is what Blacklight reports for our website—TheIntelligence.com—for the sake of both transparency and knowledge:
For full perspective (since I’m in a rare position to know exactly what this particular site is and isn’t doing!), we run ads on the website via AdSense and also periodically run ads of our own on Facebook to let folks know what we’re up to. That’s all most of that stuff is about—an inevitable part of trying to stay afloat in this industry but nothing nefarious (and also nothing our paying members ever see, since they’re already supporting us directly).
The “third-party cookies” and “trackers designed to evade cookie-blockers” are where it gets especially interesting. That all may sound slightly sinister—but in our case, at least, it’s mostly about the Insider area of our website and the fact that we use a Patreon-owned service called Memberful to let members sign in and access all of our members-only guidebooks, archives, databases, and other such resources. Third-party cookies are what allow folks to sign in and stay signed in over time.
That’s a good reminder, then, that you really need to take the data Blacklight gives you in proper context. It’s certainly not a cause to freak out.
But it is a useful tool for better understanding what’s happening across the web and at least being aware of the various systems at play on sites you visit—’cause when it comes to modern tech in particular, a little transparency and a pinch of extra perspective can only be a good thing.
- Blacklight is 100% web-based. It works in any browser, on any device, without any downloads or installations.
- It’s completely free, too, as part of a service provided by an investigative tech publication called The Markup.
- You never have to sign into the site or provide any manner of personal data.
Treat yourself to even more tech treasures with my free Cool Tools newsletter. You’ll get one new off-the-beaten-path gem in your inbox every Wednesday, straight from me to you.
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