Self explanatory
In: Engineering
One way social media tracks you is through “tracking pixels.”
Essentially:
* Facebook pays Wally’s Window Warehouse a lot of money.
* You visit Wally’s Window Warehouse in your browser.
* Your browser establishes a secure connection with the Wally’s Window Warehouse’s website.
* Wally’s Window Warehouse sends your browser a list of all the elements it wants to show on the web page (images, scripts, fonts, etc.)
* Your browser goes through the list and makes separate requests to download them. Some of them come from other sources, like fonts from google.
* On that list is a single 1×1 pixel image called “wally.gif” hosted on Facebook’s server.
* Your browser requests that image from Facebook.
* Facebook recognizes your browser when it sends the request, because it’s seen other requests from your browser before.
* Facebook now knows that you visited the website for Wally’s Window Warehouse.
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