Mozilla introduced Lightbeam recently, a new add-on for its popular web browser Firefox that takes advantage of interactive visualizations to give users a unique view of who they are interacting with on the internet.
Lightbeam amasses data over time by consistently logging the first-party websites that people visit, as well as the third-parties – market researchers and advertisers, for example – that are seeing you there. As users continue to browse the web, the Lightbeam graph will evolve, displaying the third-parties that have seen individuals at multiple sites.
The new add-on was originally called Collusion and was introduced in February 2012 as an experimental project. It was conceived in July 2011 as a way to view browsing behavior and data collection on the internet.
