In the first part of my discussion with Bill Budington from the EFF, we’re going to talk about some of the key ways in which we are tracked around the web as we surf from site to site. I’ll ask Bill who is tracking up, why they’re tracking us, and we’ll get into some of the clever and downright devious methods by which we are tracked and recognized on the web.

In part 2 (next week) Bill will help us understand why it’s so hard to disguise ourselves on the web and how tools like EFF’s Panopticlick can show us what’s going on under the covers. We’ll also offer up some solutions or at least mitigations for all this tracking.

Bill is a Senior Staff Technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). He works on privacy and security-enhancing projects, such as the HTTPS Everywhere browser add-on and Panopticlick, a tool that alerts users users to how vulnerable they are to browser tracking. He has also contributed to projects such as Let’s Encrypt and SecureDrop.