Panopticlick is a web app designed by EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) to test the tracking protection of your web browser. It tests multiple levels of tracking protections for your web browser, for example, whether your web browser is protecting against tracking ads, against invisible trackers, against usually whitelisted trackers, third-party trackers etc. Furthermore, it also checks whether your web browser itself is giving out a unique ID to the tracking servers. Without a unique web browser ID, some tracking servers fail to track your web browser behavior.
Using Panopticlick is very easy – just visit their website and click on the button that says Test Me. You can optionally choose to track your web browser using an actual tracking company which basically makes your web browser load one of the well-known tracking servers. During the testing progress, the Panopticlick website collects some of the anonymous data about your web browser but it does not share this data with any third party.
The testing might take less something around than a minute and you will be able to see the results on the same page. It will give one line statement about the privacy and tracking protection of your web browser but if you scroll down, then you can see the test results for all the various tracking protections and whether your web browser has passed these tests or if it has failed these tests.
You can easily improve the tracking protection for your web browser using various tools like Disconnect that is available for all the major web browsers. After installing Disconnect extension in your web browser, you can perform the test once again by clicking on the Re-Test Your Browser button. This time Panopticlick should report improved tracking protection for your web browser.
You can visit Panopticlick website at https://panopticlick.eff.org/.