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Internet safety
Course: Internet safety > Unit 1
Lesson 5: Going deeper with safe browsingTracking users on the Internet
Learn how websites track users through methods like accounts, cookies, and IP addresses. Tracking can offer benefits like personalization, but may also raise privacy concerns. We discuss how to manage tracking by logging out, deleting cookies, and using virtual private networks (VPNs). Created by Sal Khan.
Want to join the conversation?
- To Khan,
About Cookies, I heard they can track people. Some government forces use them to track people down through their IP Addresses. Another thing about these cookies is that sometimes the government actually makes them so that you can never clear them mainly for tracking purposes as stated in the first sentence. By chance is all of this true?
-Sincerely
Abhi(11 votes)- Yes, there are most definitely some governments around the world that have internet surveillance programs. They may use cookies and IP addresses (plus other methods) to track internet activity.
The last part about being unable to clear these cookies does not seem true. Cookies are set and stored by your browser, so if you are using a public browser of your own choosing, you should always be able to remove cookies. The only way you could be prevented from removing the cookies is if there was malware installed on your device that automatically re-added the cookie or if the government somehow had physically tampered with the device.(3 votes)
- Safety internet is one thing how dry are these mans eyes get him some eyedrops please 🙏(11 votes)
- What do you do if you download a app, that's actually a virus but you don't know. Then some pop-ups come in so you delete the app. But is it possible that the virus stays on your device AFTER you've deleted the app?(5 votes)
- yes, it is possible for a virus to stay on your computer even if you deleted its source. (kinda creepy, right?) Resetting your computer would probably destroy a virus, so keeping backups on your data is definitely a good idea.(8 votes)
- How come google sometimes doesn't let me delete my search history?4:45(4 votes)
- You may be behind some sort of content filters / administrative or parental controls. Try going to
chrome ://management/
to be able to see what's filtering you.(4 votes)
- How can I tell if a site is actually using my cookies?(4 votes)
- If you're on Chrome, where the URL is on the top of your screen, to the direct left of it should be a padlock of sorts. Click on it -- it should open up a menu. One of the icons says "cookies" (2nd to the bottom). If you click on it, it will provide a list of what cookies are being used and the option to block / remove them.(3 votes)
- At, you said about cookies; what if some websites force you to accept cookies? 1:00(4 votes)
- Most of the time, certain websites require you to accept cookies in order to work. You can get to customize the cookies you receive from that site, using a small modal that appears once you first visit the site. You can also block them all together from your browser settings.(1 vote)
- I'm a homeschooled kid, I've been using khan academy since early august for my entire school day. Is that enough or should I do more than this?(5 votes)
- Why my pfp look like the Japan flag?(3 votes)
- What if you download an app and it's actually a virus like what do you do to figure it out and fix the problem?(2 votes)
- Why are you talking about cookie(1 vote)
Video transcript
- So there's a bunch of reasons why a website
might want to track you. And depending on your opinion, you might think some
of these are reasonable and you might think some
of them are unreasonable. Just to understand, imagine if you were to
go to say Khan Academy and you were to do some work, well it might be nice that if you were to come back another day that, that work isn't lost. And so that might be a reason why you would want Khan
Academy to know who you are. Now, there's a bunch of different ways that this could happen. The most obvious way is by having an account with
a username and a password. So when you type in your
username and password the site knows exactly who you are. It can retrieve your data from a database and then you can pick up
right where you left off. That's probably the
most obvious to people. And it's also the most
obvious how to not be tracked in that way is that you log out. But just because you logged out or just because you don't have a username
and password doesn't mean that you can't be tracked by a site. There's several other
ways that can be tracked that you should know about and also know how to
undo them if possible. Another way is leveraging
something called cookies. Cookies, even if you don't
have an account on a site, most web browsers are
going to allow the website to place a little bit of
text on your computer. So the browser, which is running on your computer is gonna place it, so that next time your browser goes to that site again, the site will say, oh this is the same person
whose cookie I put there. And then there might that
cookie might have a little bit of data associated with it and say, okay there could be some useful things. We can pick up where we left off. We can customize for what
you were looking for. Or you might say that's
a little bit creepy, that a site that I
didn't get permission to is able to keep track of me. And so you might want
to delete your cookies which your browser will allow you to do. Now cookies, as I saId,
they have their benefits. This one of the reasons why you can often stay logged into a website because the website says, oh, this is a cookie. This is the person who keeps logging in. You might want the personalization of the advertisements or any other customizations
without logging in. And that's where a cookie could be useful. But if you don't want it, of
course, you can delete it. Now, another way that a
website can keep track is your IP address. When your web browser which is running on your
computer or on your phone wants to look at a website, it sends a request to that website, and then that request sends the data, sends the website back. And so in order to send the data back it needs an address for your
phone or for your computer and that's going to be in
the form of an IP address. Now you can imagine if that
site knows your IP address and then if you were to
come from the same device with the same IP address,
again, it'll say, okay, it's at least the same device. Maybe it's the same person. And then they might be able
to track you in that way. Once again, it might be for some good uses, like customization or maybe it's things that you
aren't so comfortable with. Now, what gets extra interesting and might be useful or not useful, depending on your point
of view is that it's not necessarily just your
relationship with one website. For example, you might have an
advertiser that puts cookies on a bunch of websites,
and so can keep track of you as you go from site to site. And so then it's getting, at least for me, I don't like the fact that people can see how I'm moving around on the internet. Or I remember recently I was looking for a mountain bike and I
did it on one eCommerce site. And then all of a sudden it seemed like the whole internet knew that I wanted to buy a mountain bike. I didn't end up buying a mountain bike. Now some of you might say, that's nice. You know, the internet knows
I want a mountain bike. I'd like to keep being presented with ads on mountain bikes. Some of you might say,
hey, that's not so cool. It was just, well, you
know, a random search I did. And it's kind of weird that the internet is starting
to build this profile of me of someone who might be in
the market for mountain bikes. And so once again, deleting
your cookies can go a long way to preventing that type of thing, if you're uncomfortable with it. And then IP addresses, that's
a little bit harder to hide. Sometimes you have dynamic IP addresses sometimes it changes, but the clearest way of protecting your IP address is if you use something like
a virtual private network which does get a little bit more complex. Now related to all of this, some of you also might be thinking about being tracked when you do a search. You might see that, hey, these suggested searches that the site is giving, it seems like it's kind of specific to me. And that's because in many cases it is. The search engine probably has placed cookies, or it's
keeping with an IP address of things that you have
searched for before. And the things that you have clicked on. And so it could use that maybe to give you different search results, maybe to change what the auto-complete is. It also might be keeping
track of a search history. So the search history could be useful, if you wanna look at other sites that
you have been to before or you might not want that around. You might not want the
site or someone else who if you just happen
to be using your computer to see what you've been searching for. So most browsers, sorry most search engines are
going to let you delete that. So there's a lot more to it. This is just kind of
the tip of the iceberg, but think about how you
may or may not be tracked and think about how you may
or may not want to be tracked. And good hygiene is, especially if you're at a public
computer log out of things. That's also so other people
can't use use your account, really be thoughtful about whether you even want to
create an account for a site. Is this something that you really need? What are going to be the benefits for you? Think about whether you
want to accept cookies? I would recommend deleting
cookies pretty regularly. It might have some negatives. You might have to re-log into a few sites, but there's probably a
lot of other shady sites that no longer can
track what you're doing. But even if you do all of those things still be very careful
and very conscientious.