As days pass the newspaper keeps getting more redundant. Hardly anybody I know of reads the physical newspaper – in fact the only people I know of are my parents and grandparents. What do the others do? The others open one of the news websites to stay updated with what’s happening. There may be many of us though, who don’t have a fixed website we like to read our news on, and generally open whichever we come across first. Have we ever stopped to think how much the news sites track readers?
Premise
With the latest update of Snap Search, we’re now blocking more ads, trackers and analytics than ever before. To test the efficiency, we decided to try various news websites and see how these sites track readers.
To keep the competition fair, we picked 1 topic which all of them had written about – in this case about TV reporter Victoria Price who was diagnosed with cancer after a viewer emailed her to get a lump on her throat checked.
Rules
- The following list is not in any specific order.
- The number represents a total of blocked requests, which includes ads, trackers and analytics.
Let’s Start!
Conclusion
If we’re talking in pure numbers:
- Most blocked resources: USA Today (46)
- Least blocked resources: BBC News (9) and The New York Times (9)
- Average over 15 websites: 23 Resources Blocked
However, if you’re looking for an answer as to which one is the safest to read your news – I guess it would BBC or NYT based on the numbers alone. A lot of people have their favourites and many simply don’t trust certain news platforms so in the end the decision is on you. Treat this only as a fair warning, or something which you should pay attention to.
I guess the real question isn’t which one is safe, it’s rather where is it safe. If you’re sure your browser is blocking enough of it, you don’t have much to worry about. You have very less chances of finding a website that does 0 tracking – so you should be equipped to protect yourself from those that do. If you’re an Android user, consider reading the news using Snap Search ????
Please remember this was completely out of curiosity while testing the latest version of Snap Search. Fun fact: Snap Search has a really cool reader mode for comfortably reading your news.
Also, does anybody have any more ideas on more such lists that can be made?
PS: Don’t forget to share and spread the word ????
1 Comment