Canadian newspapers and financial institutions compromise you instead of protect you
On Vancouver Island, you might pick up the Times Colonist newspaper to see what’s happening. There are little to no privacy risks if you buy it from a stand. However on the internet, where the company has the opportunity to protect you even more than the physical space, they’ve decided to try a different angle… sharing your reading habits with other companies. If you use ghostery you can see that by viewing timescolonist.com, they are sharing your viewing habits on every page you visit to at least 10 different companies, with little to no disclosure on what those third parties do with your information.
| Canadian Newspaper | Trackers |
|---|---|
| timescolonist.com | 10 |
| nationalpost.com | 6 |
| vancouversun.com | 6 |
| mondaymag.com | 6 |
| torontosun.com | 4 |
| ottawacitizen.com | 3 |
| cbc.ca/bc/ | 3 |
| theglobeandmail.com | 3 |
| canada.com/business/ | 3 |
| canada.com | 2 |
| thechronicleherald.ca | 1 |
| thepeterboroughexaminer.com | 1 |
| halifaxnewsnet.ca | 0 |
| | |—|
If your local newspaper isn’t a concern, which it should be, what about your financial institution?
| Canadian Financial Institution | Trackers |
|---|---|
| Scotia iTrade | 4 |
| Coast Capital credit union | 3 |
| RBC Canada | 3 |
| Investors Group | 2 |
| CIBC | 1 |
| Toronto-Dominion | 1 |
| Island Savings credit union | 1 |
Why are these organizations providing your private news reading habits, and online financial transactions to 3rd party companies? If you decided to ask them, perhaps also ask how much money are they making from providing your information?
How does your local news website score? What about your financial institution? Download ghostery and find out for yourself.
It should be noted that 10 trackers doesn’t necessarily mean worse than 1 tracker; if your personal information is provided to a tracker, you have no control of what happens to it when it gets there… they could sell it to 50 more companies.
If you find any other interesting results from ghostery, let us know on twitter and we might add it!