I’m Spying On You Right Now

You’re being watched. Can you feel it? As you read this post, little bots behind the scenes track you and your interactions. Creepy, right?

Photo by Dmitry Ratushny on Unsplash

A few weeks ago, I confessed to being a nosy neighbor. My eye catches every movement out my office window. I’ve always been good at deducing information based on observations; it’s probably part of my architect personality type. As good as I am at making observations out my window, it pales in comparison to how I’m spying on you while you read this post.

You’re being watched. Can you feel it? Regardless of where you’re reading this, little bots behind the scenes track you and your interactions.

• Medium tracks how much time you spend on the page to determine if you “read” the entire article or not. They provide this information to me through stats. I can’t see specifically who read or viewed the content, just the total number of how many did.
• My website uses WordPress. The JetPack plugin, created by Automattic (the company behind WordPress), tracks basic browsing behavior. The data includes what pages on the site are popular, search terms used to find my site, and what country you’re in.
• My weekly newsletter sends through Revue, owned by Twitter. They track who opens…