PrivacyGuard · Web Trackers Explained
What trackers are on websites?
Most websites embed third-party tracking scripts that collect data about your behaviour for advertising, analytics, and profiling — without your knowledge or direct consent. This page explains the main categories of web trackers, what they do, and how a privacy extension like PrivacyGuard blocks them.
The five main tracker categories
- Advertising pixels. Facebook Pixel, Google Ads conversion tags, TikTok Pixel. Report your visit and actions to ad platforms so they can build profiles and measure which ads led to purchases. Present on the majority of commercial websites.
- Analytics scripts. Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, Mixpanel. Measure visitor counts, page views, and user journeys. Generally less privacy-invasive than ad pixels but still report your behaviour to third parties.
- Session recorders. Hotjar, FullStory, Clarity. Record mouse movements, clicks, scrolls, and sometimes form keystrokes. Used for UX research but involve recording your real-time screen activity.
- Social widgets. Facebook Like/Share buttons, Twitter Tweet buttons. Even if you do not click them, they report that you visited the page to the respective social network, enabling cross-site tracking without cookies.
- Fingerprinting scripts. Collect browser characteristics (fonts installed, screen resolution, hardware settings) to create a persistent identifier that survives cookie clearing. Harder to block than cookies.
Block trackers with PrivacyGuard
Free Chrome extension. Blocks advertising pixels, fingerprinting, and session recorders.
Install free