Blacklight can reveal all kinds of secrets that are invisible to the naked eye.
So what if you have visible web blacklight—how to shine a bright light on the sites you visit and reveal what indeed what happened to them underground?
My friend, I have a tool for you today.
Find all kinds of little-known tech treasures for free Cool tools newsletter from Intelligence. A new useful discovery in your inbox every Wednesday!
Your most needed web privacy scanner
The modern web is full of all kinds of invisible tracking technologies—and while the majority It’s less troubling than the marketing-driven narrative would lead you to believe, something to be said for that at least you know with what there is.
➜ This is exactly where this week’s Cool Tool comes into play. It is called, appropriately, The Blacklight-and it’s a free resource to peek behind the curtain of any site on our sight-weary web indeed what types of programs are there to look at.
⌚ It will take a while 20 seconds to self-identify:
- Just go to the Blacklight website in any browser of your choice on any device in front of you.
- Type or paste any web address in the box at the top of the screen.
- Then click or tap the Scan Site button to get started.
Soon, Blacklight will review the site you submitted and provide a complete list of all the tracking-related technologies it finds hidden on it.
Here, for example, is what Blacklight found for The Verge:
And here are its LinkedIn results:
Here, for now, is what Blacklight is reporting on ours website—TheIntelligence.com—for both transparency and information:
To get a fuller view (as I am in the rare position of knowing exactly what this particular site is and isn’t!), we run ads on the website with AdSense and occasionally run our own ads on Facebook to let people know. which is upon you. That’s all most of that stuff is about—an inevitable part of trying to keep working in the industry but nothing bad (and nothing our paying members ever see, since they already support us directly).
“Third-party cookies” and “trackers designed to avoid cookie-blockers” are the most interesting. That is possible noise it’s a little bad—but for us, at least, it’s about the interior of our website and the fact that we use a service managed by Patreon called Member to allow members to log in and access all of our members-only guides, archives, databases, and other such resources. Third-party cookies are what allow people to sign in again stay log in later.
That’s a good reminder, then, that you really need to take the data Blacklight gives you in proper context. It’s certainly no reason to panic.
But it is something A useful tool to better understand what is happening on the web at least you know of the various systems at play on the sites you visit—because when it comes to modern technology in particular, a little more transparency and more visibility can only be a good thing.
- Blacklight is 100% web based. It works in any browser, on any device, without any download or installation.
- It’s completely free, too, as part of a service provided by an investigative technology publication called The Markup.
- You do not need to log in to the site or provide any kind of personal data.
Get even more excited about tech gems with my freebie Cool tools newsletter. You’ll get one new unbeaten gem in your inbox every Wednesday, straight from me to you.
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