Disconnect - Tracking Leads to Hacking

4 min read Original article ↗

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Hidden, uncontrolled tracking leads to hacking.

We block unwanted data collection at the source and classify the ecosystem.

Personal data fuels precision attacks on you, your employees, and your customers. AI makes those attacks faster and more accurate. Disconnect cuts off the data supply, and powers the trust infrastructure for what comes next.

"Nation-state actors and cybercriminals shift from 'breaking in' to 'logging in.'"

— Cloudflare 2026 Threat Intelligence Report (March 2026)

Industry Standard Tracker Intelligence

4 of the top 5 browsers

Default in Firefox and Edge today. Adopted by Chrome and Samsung Internet. The classification layer the web has relied on for fifteen years.

Firefox

Mozilla Firefox

Edge

Microsoft Edge

Chrome

Google Chrome

Samsung Internet

Samsung Internet

The Problem

Trackers are embedded everywhere.

They silently build the data profiles attackers weaponize against you.

75%

of websites have hidden trackers

HTTP Archive Web Almanac

70%

of mobile apps send data to trackers before any consent dialog

Kollnig et al., Oxford

~50%

of inbox emails contain tracking pixels

Proton Mail

42%

of all web requests on U.S. Army networks were to tracker domains.

Trackers from banned apps including TikTok were still present in web traffic.

U.S. Army Cyber Institute, West Point (February 2026)

Your Data Has a Price

How attackers access and weaponize your data.

Hint: attackers use AI too.

Hackers don't have to hack anymore — your personal data is for sale directly through data brokers and indirectly through sophisticated ad tech.

Step One

Buy data direct or targeted ads

Attackers buy your personal data directly from data brokers, including IP, location, real name, email, phone, and behavioral history. They also exploit audience-targeting capabilities, turning advertising platforms built for legitimate businesses into precision-attack channels.

Step Two

How ads reveal your data

When you click or even see an ad, the advertiser receives your unique device identifiers, location, behavioral profile, and the audience segments used to target you. Anything you submit on their site or app — email, name, form data — or that they can track also gets tied directly to your profile.

Step Three

Precision AI-powered attacks

Your personal data becomes AI fuel for surveillance, stalking, blackmail, social engineering, and precision phishing — all aimed at the real you. These attacks evolve as AI tooling matures. Documented cases include high-level government tracking and harassment of individuals at places of worship, healthcare clinics, and immigration offices. No hacking required.

Real-time bidding is "the biggest data breach ever recorded." It broadcasts personal data 178 trillion times per year across the U.S. and Europe.

— Irish Council for Civil Liberties (2022)

Leading Research and Technology

Our data drives headlines.

Leading journalists trust Disconnect to expose what others can't find.

BBC February 2026 Featured

TikTok's pixel secretly collects health data from crisis and cancer support sites.

Disconnect provided the technical analysis for BBC Future's investigation into TikTok's expanded web tracking pixel. Our team found that the updated pixel collects information in unusual ways compared to its competitors, intercepting data from Google Tag Manager and transmitting health information without site owners' knowledge. "They're silently capturing that data without the site owner explicitly sharing that information with TikTok," said Patrick Jackson, Disconnect's CTO.

Read the BBC investigation Read our full technical research

Slate May 2026 Latest

"A native TV app is a data firehose."

Casey Oppenheim, Disconnect's CEO, told Slate that smart TV apps capture rich behavioral data like device type, session length, household fingerprint, IP address, ad exposure, and the context of what was watched before and after. AI-enhanced tracking can now identify who in the household is watching, infer interests and political leanings, and shift ad targeting from the household down to the individual. Cross-device identifier matching makes the Smart TV app the new "holy grail" of ad targeting, and most TV platforms have weaker, buried privacy controls compared to web and mobile.

Read the Slate article

Why Disconnect

Choose your path.

Disconnect identifies and stops tracker infrastructure before it collects data.

For your organization

Business

Plug Disconnect's tracker intelligence into your existing security stack — cloud, VPN, SWG, DNS, etc. Network-wide coverage across every device, app, and browser.

  • 12–14× more trackers blocked vs. enterprise defaults
  • Deploys via existing infrastructure, no new agents
  • ~4 human-verified updates per week

Protect Your Workforce

AI-powered attacks now target ordinary people through their leaked data. Disconnect blocks the tracker infrastructure that makes precision phishing, social engineering, and surveillance possible.

  • Tracker + fingerprint blocking on iOS, Android, and the web
  • 2.4× faster page loads, 39% less data usage
  • The same intelligence that powers Firefox & Edge

Get Personal Protection

Privacy intelligence for products, audits, and research. Forensic analysis on demand for any app, website, or tracker — the platform trusted by 4 of the top 5 browsers.

  • App X-ray, Web X-ray, Tracker X-ray
  • Embed default tracker protection in browsers, apps, platforms
  • Datasets, integrations, and reports — enterprise licensing

See Lightbox API