Facebook and Google aren’t the only ones tracking your clicks

A study of government websites shows a proliferation of companies that collect even the most private information from users

Criticism of big tech companies that track us across the internet without our informed consent misses a bigger picture: There are hundreds of ad-tracking companies that do the same, and regulators have been powerless to rein them in.

A report by the Danish privacy consulting firm Cookiebot says that 112 ad-tracking companies collect information about visitors to government and public sector websites in European Union countries, even though the websites are not ad-supported. Of these, 52 were found on French government sites; German taxpayer-funded sites were found to be the best protected, yet one-third of their pages still contained advertising trackers.