BlogTrackers and Nations
Where in the World are My Trackers?
19 Mar '26
βββOn average, 46.16% of regional websites host non-local trackers, with a standard deviation (π) of 33.77%, indicating that nearly half of the websites transmit user tracking data outside their country." The countries that have no regional websites with non-local trackers are, US, Canada, and India. However, "among websites with non-local trackers (ππππ and ππππ£ ), 43% of the websites use at least one tracker hosted in France. This is followed by the United Kingdom (24%), Germany (23%) and Australia (23%). Kenya hosts trackers for 14% of analyzed websites, while trackers in other countries are used by less than 10% of websites."
ββThe location of the tracking servers seem a bit odd in context. For instance, the tracking flows from Jordan, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia to France, among others. These nations don't fall under the Francophone sphere and are not near France geographically. The claim that these may be due to infrastructure issues within their region also doesn't make much sense either. You can have infrastructure issues and block/remove trackers, for a nation like Pakistan. The other three have the resources (money) and space within there nation to host there own servers. I understand why you would look to regional infrastructure as the issue. When you notice that other nations, like Thailand, trackers flow to nearby countries like Malaysia and Singapore. Argentina to Brazil, Uganda and Rwanda to Kenya. In this case, however, correlation isn't causation. This is an issue of governance and cleanup.
ββNo nation should have non-local trackers on its state websites. The identity of its citizens can be easily tracked and sold by data brokers. A deeper dive into what services are being hosted and what kind of third-party script is hosted, needs to be done at both a national and regional level. According to this paper, Google hosts a dominant share of trackers on these ππππ and ππππ£ sites. Cleaning up technical debt and finding local alternatives on those sites would be a crucial step forward for security. For people outside the US, Canada and India, the author would suggest keeping the uBlock Origin and Privacy Badger turned on even on trusted state sites.