Before I moved into my current home, I did one last walk through, peering into nooks, crannies and closets. And I found something. An urn. That’s right, a burial urn–the kind that store ashes–sitting on a shelf in the garage, tucked between crusty cans of paint and primer. It was even labeled with a name, date and…crematorium.

I was on my way to sign papers at the agent’s office, so I put the urn in my car, hoping to get it back to whomever it belonged.

But the joke was on me. When I walked into the real estate office, there was a large human skeleton—the kind you see in science classrooms—in the front window.

“What’s up with the skeleton?” I asked.

“Oh…believe it or not, we found that in one of the houses we cleaned out,” joked the realtor.

“It wasn’t the house I’m moving into, was it…?”

“Well…uh…”

His hemming and hawing told me all I needed to know. I stood up and left. I’m sure he thought he’d scared me away, but I had gone back to my car to fetch the urn.

“That reminds me,” I said when I returned, plunking the urn down on his desk, “I found this in the garage.”

I left the urn with the realtor and his skeleton.

All true. I swear.

In the spirit of all that, here’s an add-on to take the mystery out of how sites collect user data. Meet Ghostery.

After you install Ghostery, you’ll find a small blue (or gray if he’s resting) ghost in the bottom right of your browser:

Whenever you browse and info is available, a bubble will show up to let you know how a site is collecting data about its users:

You can find out more about what those sites do by going back to the ghost icon, and following a few prompts:

Keep going:

Whether you want to scare yourself silly with what’s behind the scenes on the Web, or do some smart research about the tools sites are using to succeed, Ghostery is your add-on.

Post from Elise Allen, whose house has so many ghosts, dinner guests can't find a spot to sit down. See all posts by Elise Allen.