Since it is incredibly relevant to our class, I thought I would share this opportunity to participate in a research study:

http://notice.websci.net/

Ever wondered who’s watching you browse the web?

Advertisers, market intelligence companies and other websites routinely track many of the web pages that we visit. At the University of Southampton, we’ve developed a tool that shows you information about who’s tracking your web browsing and the information that they might have. The tool also gives you the ability to remove that information by deleting the small “cookies” that link you to it.

Help us out!

We’re looking for participants to help us evaluate our tool. Participation is straightforward and just involves the (very easy) installation of an extension in Google Chrome. The study takes just over a week, during which you can use your computer as normal but will be presented with information about what various websites have learned about you.

Please note that you must be at least 18 years old and regularly use the Google Chrome web browser in order to take part.

During the study, we’ll collect limited information about some of the websites that you visit and the information that they may have learned about you, including a partial list of the websites that you have visited. We only do this to help us measure the messages that are being displayed and to understand more about their efficacy. All of this data is collected anonymously and we don’t think it’s a threat to your privacy.

To get started, you just need to install the Chrome extension. Once it’s installed you’ll be asked to consent to the formal study briefing and to give us some basic demographic information about yourself.

If you like, you can read the participant information before installing the extension.