README.md

 

Bringing Transparency to Online Tracking

Transparency · Privacy · Tracking landscape · Built by Ghostery
Trackers · Websites · Explorer

Downloading the data

Each month, we release a new version of the web site. The data from the last month can be directly accessed through the website.

The raw data, from which the graphs have been computed, is also available as an open data set (updated every month). You can also download historical data. More information on the raw data can be found here.

WhoTracks.me also builts heavily on another open source project called TrackerDB; all meta data (e.g. company descriptions) is maintained there.

Using the data

You can directly use the raw data, which are all text files. As an alternative, you an also download it locally and use the Python API:

python3.11 -m venv venv
. venv/bin/activate
pip install git+https://github.com/ghostery/whotracks.me.git

... or if you have locally checked it out:

python3.11 -m venv venv
. venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt

The Python API can now be accessed as follows (make sure you have already downloaded data):

from whotracksme.data.loader import DataSource

data = DataSource()

# available entities
data.trackers
data.companies
data.sites

A whitepaper for WhoTracks.me is available at https://arxiv.org/abs/1804.08959, and here's a BibTeX entry that you can use to cite it in a publication:

@misc{whotracksme,
    title={WhoTracks.Me: Shedding light on the opaque world of online tracking},
    author={Arjaldo Karaj and Sam Macbeth and Rémi Berson and Josep M. Pujol},
    year={2018},
    eprint={1804.08959},
    archivePrefix={arXiv},
    primaryClass={cs.CY}
}

Contributing

We rely on contributions for the community to keep the quality of this project high. If you want, you can support us in multiple ways:

• Do you see inconsistencies in the data? Please open a Github issue here. We will have a look!
• Do you see wrong company descriptions? Did we put something in the category? Please check out the TrackerDB project, where all the meta data is kept, and open an issue, or send us a pull request.
• Do you have any feedback on the WhoTracks.me homepage or about the documentation? Please, let us know, so we can improve.

You can also contact us via email at [email protected]

Right to Amend

Please read our Guideline for 3rd parties wanting to suggest corrections to their data.

Local builds

Readme on local builds (this is mostly relevant for the maintainer of this project)

License

The content of this project itself is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license, and the underlying source code used to generate and display that content is licensed under the MIT license.