Earlier this year, an editor working on The Times’s Privacy Project asked me whether I’d be interested in having all my digital activity tracked, examined in meticulous detail and then published — you know, for journalism. “Hahaha,” I said, and then I think I made an “at least buy me dinner first” joke, but it turned out he was serious. What could I say? I’m new here, I like to help, and, conveniently, I have nothing whatsoever at all to hide.

Like a colonoscopy, the project involved some special prep. I had to install a version of the Firefox web browser that was created by privacy researchers to monitor how websites track users’ data. For several days this spring, I lived my life through this Invasive Firefox, which logged every site I visited, all the advertising tracking servers that were watching my surfing and all the data they obtained. Then I uploaded the data to my colleagues at The Times, who reconstructed my web sessions into the gloriously invasive picture of my digital life you see here. (The project brought us all very close; among other things, they could see my physical location and my passwords, which I’ve since changed.)

What did we find? The big story is as you’d expect: that everything you do online is logged in obscene detail, that you have no privacy. And yet, even expecting this, I was bowled over by the scale and detail of the tracking; even for short stints on the web, when I logged into Invasive Firefox just to check facts and catch up on the news, the amount of information collected about my endeavors was staggering.

Tracking Resources Each dot represents one tracking resource (like a script, tracking pixel or image), which would be blocked by an ad-blocker Amazon Facebook Google Collects my latitude and longitude Trackers sharing unique ID Start of the day 11:56AM Google.com/search 11:56AM News.google.com 11:58AM News.google.com 12:24PM Google.com/search Tracker with location 12:24PM 12:24PM Go.peteforamerica.com Google.com/search 11:58AM 12:23PM Huffpost.com Washingtonpost.com 11:58AM News.google.com 12:24PM Peteforamerica.com 11:58AM 12:24PM Freebeacon.com Peteforamerica.com 12:23PM 12:27PM Medium.com Google.com/search Twitter tracking script 11:59AM 12:23PM 12:37PM Google.com/search Google.com/search Google.com/search 12:37PM Google.com/search 12:22PM Vanityfair.com 12:37PM Youtube.com 12:51PM 12:22PM Google.com/search Google.com/search 12:22PM Google.com/search 12:51PM 12:07PM Nytimes.com Google.com/search 11:59AM Washingtonpost.com 12:52PM My unique identifier shared across sites Nytimes.com 03:15PM 12:52PM Medium.com Nytimes.com 01:36PM Stratechery.com 03:15PM Medium.com 12:53PM 01:35PM Washingtonpost.com Techmeme.com 01:00PM Google.com/search 03:16PM Elizabethwarren.com 01:13PM Google.com/search 01:01PM Huffpost.com 01:13PM 03:16PM Google.com/search Elizabethwarren.com 01:12PM Google.com/search End of the day 01:04PM Google.com/search 03:17PM Elizabethwarren.com Tracker with browser details 01:11PM Time.com 01:11PM 01:04PM Google.com/search Washingtonpost.com 01:06PM 01:06PM Medium.com Google.com/search Tracking Resources Amazon Facebook Google Collects my location Trackers sharing unique ID Each dot represents one tracking resource (like a script, tracking pixel or image), which would be blocked by an ad-blocker Start of the day 11:56AM Google.com/search 11:56AM News.google.com 11:58AM News.google.com 11:58AM Huffpost.com Tracker with location 11:58AM News.google.com 11:58AM Freebeacon.com Twitter tracking script 11:59AM Google.com /search 11:59AM Washingtonpost.com 12:07PM Google.com/search 12:22PM My unique identifier shared across sites 12:22PM 12:22PM Vanityfair.com 12:23PM Google.com/search 12:23PM Medium.com 12:23PM Washingtonpost.com 12:24PM Google.com/search 12:24PM Google.com/search 12:24PM Go.peteforamerica.com 12:24PM Peteforamerica.com 12:24PM Peteforamerica.com 12:27PM 12:37PM Google.com/search 12:37PM 12:37PM Youtube.com 12:51PM Google.com/search 12:51PM Nytimes.com 12:52PM Nytimes.com 12:52PM Nytimes.com 12:53PM Washingtonpost.com 01:00PM Google.com/search 01:01PM Huffpost.com 01:04PM Google.com/search 01:04PM Washingtonpost.com Tracker with browser details 01:06PM Google.com/search 01:06PM Medium.com 01:11PM Google.com/search 01:11PM Time.com 01:12PM Google.com/search 01:13PM 01:13PM 01:35PM Techmeme.com 01:36PM Stratechery.com 03:15PM Medium.com 03:15PM Medium.com 03:16PM Elizabethwarren.com 03:16PM Elizabethwarren.com End of the day 03:17PM Elizabethwarren.com Tracking Resources Amazon Facebook Google Collects my latitude and longitude Trackers sharing unique ID Start of the day 11:56AM Google.com/search 11:56AM News.google.com 11:58AM Tracker with location News.google.com Each dot represents one tracking resource (like a script, tracking pixel or image), which would be blocked by an ad-blocker 11:58AM News.google.com 11:58AM Huffpost.com 12:22PM Vanityfair.com 11:58AM Freebeacon.com 12:23PM Google.com/search Twitter tracking script 12:23PM Medium.com 11:59AM Google.com /search 12:22PM Google.com/search 12:22PM 12:23PM 12:07PM Washingtonpost.com 11:59AM 12:24PM Washingtonpost.com Google.com/search 12:24PM Google.com/search 12:24PM Go.peteforamerica.com 12:24PM Peteforamerica.com 12:27PM 12:24PM Peteforamerica.com 12:37PM Google.com/search My unique identifier shared across sites 12:37PM 01:01PM Huffpost.com 12:37PM Youtube.com 01:00PM Google.com/search 12:51PM 12:53PM Google.com/search Washingtonpost.com 12:51PM 01:04PM Nytimes.com Google.com/search 12:52PM Nytimes.com 01:04PM Washingtonpost.com 12:52PM Nytimes.com Tracker with browser details 01:06PM Google.com/search 01:06PM Medium.com 01:11PM Google.com/search 01:12PM 01:13PM Google.com/search 01:11PM Time.com 01:13PM 01:35PM Techmeme.com End of the day 01:36PM Stratechery.com 03:17PM Elizabethwarren.com 03:15PM Medium.com 03:16PM Elizabethwarren.com 03:15PM Medium.com 03:16PM Elizabethwarren.com

The session documented here took place on a weekday in June. At the time, I was writing a column about Elizabeth Warren’s policy-heavy political strategy, which involved a lot of Google searches, a lot of YouTube videos, and lots of visits to news sites and sites of the candidates themselves. As soon as I logged on that day, I was swarmed — ad trackers surrounded me, and, identifying me by a 19-digit number I think of as a prisoner tag, they followed me from page to page as I traipsed across the web.

Looking at this picture of just a few hours online, what stands out to me now is how ordinary a scene it depicts: I didn’t have to visit any shady sites or make any untoward searches — I just had to venture somewhere, anywhere, and I was watched. This is happening every day, all the time, and the only reason we’re O.K. with it is that it’s happening behind the scenes, in the comfortable shadows. If we all had pictures like this, we might revolt.

Trackers sharing unique ID Approximate location tracker 11:58AM Huffpost.com

Where I live

This tracker for Advertising.com received my almost exact location as latitude and longitude — about a quarter mile off from my actual location. Several other trackers gathered information about where I was, including my city, state, country and zip code. They base this off my IP address, so I had no chance to opt-out. They use the data to conduct targeted advertising but can also use it to track where I’m moving and build a more detailed picture of my interests and activities.

Twitter tracking script 11:59AM Google.com/search

Widgets or trackers?

Tracking scripts like this one for Twitter allow websites to add useful features like share buttons. But the scripts often double as trackers meant to record site visits and build profiles about users. In this case, Twitter can use the information about this page to suggest new followers or sell more targeted advertising on its platform.

12:22PM 11:58AM 11:58AM 11:59AM Vanityfair.com Huffpost.com Freebeacon.com Washingtonpost.com My unique identifier shared across sites 01:01PM 12:53PM 12:52PM 12:23PM Huffpost.com Washingtonpost.com Nytimes.com Washingtonpost.com 11:58AM Huffpost.com 11:58AM Freebeacon.com 11:59AM Washingtonpost.com 12:22PM Vanityfair.com 12:23PM Washingtonpost.com 12:52PM Nytimes.com 12:53PM Washingtonpost.com My unique identifier shared across sites 01:01PM Huffpost.com

My unique identifier: 5535203407606041218

The internet wasn’t built to track people across websites. But that didn’t stop advertisers. They developed technology to share identifiers among websites. This line connects all trackers that were sharing one of my unique IDs, created by the advertising company AppNexus as I browsed the internet and then stored on my browser for others to use. I had about a dozen IDs shared among sites I visited, but this one was present on eight different pages, shared with nearly a dozen trackers and advertisers including Amazon, Yahoo, Google and lesser-known companies like SpotX and Quantcast.

Tracker with browser details 01:11PM Time.com

Fingerprinting

Even when companies don’t have an ID to track me, they can use signals from my computer to guess who I am across sites. That’s partly why trackers like this one received more information about my computer than you could imagine being useful, like my precise screen size. Other trackers received my screen resolution, browser information, operating system details, and more.

12:24PM 12:24PM 12:24PM Peteforamerica.com 03:16PM 03:16PM 03:17PM Elizabethwarren.com

Election tracking

Websites for Democratic presidential candidates Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg were also participating in aggressive online tracking. Their sites sent data to Facebook, Twitter, Google, Amazon and about a dozen other third-party trackers. Warren’s site also sent my latitude and longitude to Heap Analytics along with a field indicating whether I was living in an early-primary state (I wasn’t).

12:52PM Nytimes.com 12:53PM Washingtonpost.com

News sites were the worst

Among all the sites I visited, news sites, including The New York Times and The Washington Post, had the most tracking resources. This is partly because the sites serve more ads, which load more resources and additional trackers. But news sites often engage in more tracking than other industries, according to a study from Princeton.

Google, Google, everywhere

Google’s own domains don’t contain that many trackers. The same is true for Facebook. But that’s because they place most of their trackers on other websites. Google was present on every site I visited, collecting information on where I live, the device I used and everything I looked at.