Blacklight searched 2 pages on
techcrunch.com at 29th September 2026 20:22 ET.
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Blacklight works by visiting each website with a headless browser running custom software built by The Markup. To learn more, read our methodology.
Websites containing advertising tracking technology load JavaScript code or small invisible images that are used to either build your advertising profile or to identify you for ad targeting on this site. These techniques are often used in addition to cookies to profile you.,Blacklight detected trackers on this page sending data to companies involved in online advertising. Blacklight detected scripts belonging to Integral Ad Science, Inc., Facebook, Inc., and nine other companies.
These are commonly used by advertising tracking companies to profile you based on your internet usage.,Blacklight detected 26 third-party cookies on this site. Blacklight detected cookies set for LiveIntent Inc., The Trade Desk Inc and and five others
The Facebook pixel is a snippet of code that sends data back to Facebook about people who visit this site and allows the site operator to later target them with ads on Facebook. A Facebook spokesperson told The Markup that the company set up this system so that a user doesn’t have to be “simultaneously logged into Facebook and viewing a third-party website for our business tools to function.” Common actions that can be tracked via pixel include viewing a page or specific content, adding payment information, or making a purchase. The Facebook pixel appeared in thirty percent of popular websites when we scanned them in September 2020.
This site uses Google Analytics and seems to use its ”remarketing audiences” feature that enables user tracking for targeted advertising across the internet. This feature allows a website to build custom audiences based on how a user interacts with this particular site and then follow those users across the internet and target them with advertising on other sites using Google Ads and Display & Video 360. A Google spokesperson told The Markup that site operators are supposed to inform visitors when data collected with this feature is used to connect this browsing data with someone’s real-world identity. You know when those shoes you were looking at follow you around the internet? This is one of the trackers leading to that. This feature appeared in fifty percent of popular websites when we scanned them in September 2020.
The inspected website contacted some well known actors in the ad-tech industry. Not all of these loaded trackers, so they may be different from those listed in the tests section above. For more information on each company, what it does, and which of its domains Blacklight found during the inspection, click the arrow. Reading this can give you a better idea of how the ad-tech industry works.
Blacklight detected this website sending user data to Alphabet, the technology conglomerate that encompasses Google and associated companies like Nest. The Silicon Valley giant collects data from twice the number of websites as its closest competitor, Facebook. An Alphabet spokesperson told The Markup that internet users can go here if they want to opt out of the company showing them targeted ads based on their browsing history. ,The site sent information to the following domains 2mdn.net, doubleclick.net, google.com, googlesyndication.com, googletagmanager.com, googletagservices.com.
Blacklight detected the inspected website sending user data to Amazon, which has a wide variety of business units. The most commonly appearing Amazon trackers in our scan of popular sites in September 2020 were those for CloudFront and its marketing research arm, Alexa, which helps marketers improve their search engine performance and provides site operators insights about the popularity of their websites. (This Alexa is unrelated to Amazon’s virtual assistant of the same name.) Representatives from Amazon did not respond to multiple requests for comment., The site sent information to the following domain amazon-adsystem.com.
Blacklight detected the inspected website sending user data to Comscore, a company that monitors traffic on millions of websites to create market research data on how people use the internet, which it sells to advertisers, according to The Guardian. The company’s analytics also incorporate user data collected from its dozens of corporate partners, such as Facebook, Oracle, and Salesforce, according to its own website. Representatives from Comscore did not respond to multiple requests for comment. , The site sent information to the following domain scorecardresearch.com.
Blacklight detected the inspected website sending user data to LinkedIn, which is owned by Microsoft. Primarily known as a career-focused social network, the company has branched out more broadly into advertising. In 2019, it purchased Drawbridge, which a company spokesperson told The Markup allows LinkedIn to “infer a member’s association to their devices” in what’s called an “identity graph.” At the time of the acquisition, a LinkedIn executive told Ad Exchanger the company hoped Drawbridge will fill in some of the blind spots LinkedIn has on its users.,The site sent information to the following domains licdn.com, linkedin.com.
Blacklight detected the inspected website sending user data to Microsoft. In addition to its well-known products and services, the tech behemoth sells ads on Microsoft properties and websites that use Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, for internal site searches. It also runs the Microsoft Audience Network, which uses data gathered about consumers to target ads. Of the many Microsoft-related trackers that appeared in our scan of the internet’s top 80,000 most popular websites, those associated with Bing were the most common. Microsoft’s wide variety of business units include Xandr, which runs platforms both for website operators to offer space for sale to advertisers and for advertisers to offer to buy advertising space. A Microsoft spokesperson declined to tell The Markup how user data being sent to its domains was being used., The site sent information to the following domain bing.com.
Blacklight detected the inspected website sending user data to the online advertising company Pubmatic. Pubmatic is a portal for site operators to offer space on their website for sale to advertisers. The company also runs an “identity hub” that, a PubMatic spokesperson told The Markup, helps advertisers use the data they’ve acquired from a third party— a data broker, for example—to target ads to the specific interests of someone visiting a website. , The site sent information to the following domain pubmatic.com.
Blacklight detected the inspected website sending user data to Tower Data, an ad tech company that creates profiles of web users anchored to their email address, according to its website. It also sells data about voters to political campaigns. Representatives from Tower Data did not respond to multiple requests for comment., The site sent information to the following domain rlcdn.com.
Blacklight results should not be taken as the final word on potential privacy violations by a given website. Rather, they should be treated as an initial automated inspection that requires further investigation before a definitive claim can be made.