beacon.riskified.com: How Riskified Tracks Your Shopping Behavior

Riskified’s tracker, beacon.riskified.com, is embedded in e-commerce sites to monitor your transactions and detect potential fraud. While it’s marketed as a security tool, it collects extensive personal data, posing a serious privacy risk. Here’s what it does and how to shield yourself.

What Is beacon.riskified.com?

This tracker belongs to Riskified, a company that analyzes online purchases to flag fraudulent activity for merchants. It builds detailed profiles of your behavior, which can be used to track you across platforms. As Privacy Auditors, we’re concerned about the depth of data it grabs without your explicit consent.

Data It Collects

When you shop on a site using Riskified, it captures:

• Geolocation: Derives your location from your IP address.
• IP Address: Ties your activity to a specific network location.
• Device Fingerprint: Logs browser, OS, and hardware specifics.
• Behavioral Data: Tracks mouse movements, typing speed, and clicks.
• Transaction Details: Records order value, items, and payment info.
• User ID: Links your actions across multiple sessions.
• Session ID: Monitors activity during a single visit.
• Browser Data: Captures type, version, and settings.
• Timestamps: Logs actions with exact timing.

This data creates a unique profile that can identify you beyond a single transaction.

Who Gets Your Data?

Riskified shares your information with:

• E-commerce Merchant: The retailer using Riskified for fraud checks.
• Third-party Analytics Provider: Processes data for deeper insights.
• Cloud Service Provider: Hosts Riskified’s data storage and processing.
• Law Enforcement Agency: Complies with legal requests for fraud cases.

How to Protect Yourself

Privacy Auditors Institute recommends these steps to limit Riskified’s tracking:

• Use Tracker Blockers: Tools like Privacy Auditor’s service can block beacon.riskified.com.
• Deploy a VPN: Hide your IP with a service like Mullvad to obscure location data.
• Opt for Privacy Browsers: Use Firefox with strict tracking protection or Tor Browser.
• Disable JavaScript: Stop trackers by disabling JavaScript via browser settings.
• Clear Cookies: Regularly delete cookies to break cross-session tracking.

Combine these tactics for stronger defense against invasive tracking.

Sources

• Riskified Privacy Policy: https://www.riskified.com/privacy-policy/
• Riskified Technology Blog: https://medium.com/riskified-technology

This is a legal disclaimer. All information is provided for educational purposes only.