The Product and Technology team at The Markup has been busy with what we’ve lovingly called “Blacklight Summer,” and we’ve made some major updates to Blacklight, our popular real-time website privacy inspector. Blacklight popular As of August 18, Blacklight has three new features that allow you to: Scan sites from the EU: By default, Blacklight scans from a U.S. IP address. Now you can use the new options box to scan from Europe (the Amazon Web Services infrastructure where the scan originates is located in Hesse, Germany, to be precise).
View results from a desktop browser: Blacklight has always scanned from the perspective of a mobile browser. But now with the options box, you can choose to see results from a desktop view. This includes desktop screenshots in the Learn More section of scan results.
Scan specific URLs within a site’s structure: In the past, Blacklight could only scan a site’s homepage and one randomly selected page in the site’s structure. Now, if you enter a full URL for Blacklight to scan (e.g., https://themarkup.org/about), Blacklight will analyze just that specific page. Scan sites from the EU: By default, Blacklight scans from a U.S. IP address. Now you can use the new options box to scan from Europe (the Amazon Web Services infrastructure where the scan originates is located in Hesse, Germany, to be precise). Scan sites from the EU: View results from a desktop browser: Blacklight has always scanned from the perspective of a mobile browser. But now with the options box, you can choose to see results from a desktop view. This includes desktop screenshots in the Learn More section of scan results. View results from a desktop browser: Scan specific URLs within a site’s structure: In the past, Blacklight could only scan a site’s homepage and one randomly selected page in the site’s structure. Now, if you enter a full URL for Blacklight to scan (e.g., https://themarkup.org/about), Blacklight will analyze just that specific page. Scan specific URLs within a site’s structure: https://themarkup.org/about We built these new features because, well, they’re what users told us would be most useful. We hope that proves true. Specifically, we hope the new bells and whistles will help people in the following ways: told us would be most useful They’ll allow comparisons between how sites behave for visitors from the EU versus other regions.
Scanning individual pages within a site will show if certain pages have different trackers than other pages.
Similarly, being able to look at sites in both desktop and mobile view will illuminate whether sites use different sets of trackers, depending on how people access the sites. They’ll allow comparisons between how sites behave for visitors from the EU versus other regions. Scanning individual pages within a site will show if certain pages have different trackers than other pages. Similarly, being able to look at sites in both desktop and mobile view will illuminate whether sites use different sets of trackers, depending on how people access the sites. In addition to the new features above, we’ve been working diligently to reduce the number of timeout and error messages on certain sites. Errors may still occasionally occur, but users should encounter them much less frequently. If you have questions, see anything that looks not quite right, or just want to give the team your thanks, please email us at blacklight@themarkup.org. blacklight@themarkup.org Credits: Ramsey Isler Director of Product Ramsey Isler Illustration Gabriel Hongsdusit Gabriel Hongsdusit Gabriel Hongsdusit Engagement Maria Puertas Maria Puertas Maria Puertas Copy Editing and Production Sabrina Toppa Sabrina Toppa Sabrina Toppa Editors Michael Reilly Michael Reilly Michael Reilly Also published here Also published here here Photo by Bhushan Sadani on Unsplash Photo by Bhushan Sadani on Unsplash Bhushan Sadani Unsplash

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