Kaspersky Identifies 1 Million Daily Web Tracking Attempts.

Islamabad: Kaspersky’s recent assessment of the 25 most common web tracking services, including Google services, New Relic, and Microsoft, uncovered over 38 billion occurrences of web trackers gathering user behavior information in 2024, averaging about one million detections daily.

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Web tracking encompasses the gathering, storage, and analysis of data regarding users’ online activities. This data may consist of demographics, website visits, duration spent on pages, and interactions such as clicks, scrolling, and mouse movements, which can be utilized to create heatmaps and other analytical insights. Companies use this data to tailor experiences, enhance user engagement, target advertisements more efficiently, and evaluate the performance of their online services.

Kaspersky products include a Do Not Track (DNT) feature that prevents tracking elements intended to observe user activities on websites. This function allows Kaspersky to evaluate the current landscape of data collection by web trackers. To carry out this evaluation, Kaspersky specialists examined the 25 most widespread tracking services. These comprise four from Alphabet Inc. – Google Display & Video 360, Google Analytics, Google AdSense, and YouTube Analytics – along with services from New Relic and Microsoft, including Bing and other Microsoft tracking tools. Their analysis indicated that 38,725,551,855 data collection events were recorded over a year, from July 2023 to June 2024, with users sharing their data around 1,060,974 times each day.

The report offers a region-by-region breakdown of the prevalence of various tracking services. Google Display & Video 360 holds the largest share among the top 25 tracking services in Asia. In South Asia, it accounted for 25.47% of DNT triggers, while in East Asia, it was 24.45%, in the Middle East – 22.92%, in Africa – 19.03%, and in Europe – 17.24%. The smallest share was found in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) at 8.38%, where local tracking services are more common.

Google Analytics, which monitors user behavior and keywords to enhance website traffic and performance, has its largest representation in Latin America (14.89%), followed by the Middle East (14.12%). In Europe, it represented 11.93%, and in Africa, it was 12.94%.

Google AdSense trackers lead in the Middle East (6.91%) and South Asia (6.85%), with the lowest shares in Oceania (3.76%) and the CIS (2.30%). YouTube Analytics has the highest share in South Asia (12.71%) and the Middle East (12.30%), while in Africa, it accounted for 10.25%. The lowest share was in Europe (5.65%) and North America (4.56%). Microsoft trackers have their largest share in Latin America (3.38%) and the smallest in the CIS (0.68%). Africa accounted for 2.82%, while Europe represented 1.99%. Bing trackers show significant activity in Africa (8.46%) and Europe (5.33%), with the smallest presence in the Middle East (2.66%) and CIS (0.77%). In South Korea, Japan, and Russia, where local internet services are well-developed, regional tracking systems not only rank among the top 25 but can occasionally outpace global competitors.

“While the leading 25 tracking services demonstrate that data collection isn’t limited to a few companies, the more organizations that store and process our information, the higher the risk of breaches. Nonetheless, as most tracking is managed by tech giants, there is a strong incentive for them to protect user data and maintain their reputations. Ultimately, users must take charge of their own data security by being conscious of the platforms they use and taking measures to safeguard their privacy,” comments Anna Larkina, security and privacy expert at Kaspersky.