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Technology

Nothing you can do stops this code from watching you online

By Abigail Beall

20 November 2017

person typing mysterious things

Just stop using the internet

Kathleen Finlay/plainpicture

Have you ever typed something into a search box on a website and then thought better of it? New research shows that 482 sites may be passing on that information anyway.

We have long known that information we provide online can be tracked. A website you visit might have hundreds of scripts running in the background; some deposit cookies, others track you to other websites. The variety of tracking tools mean it is almost impossible to know what happens to your data when you visit a site.

But all of these seem tame…

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