What we found by taking things apart
Every piece here rests on something we measured or unpacked ourselves — a corpus of extensions read line by line, a set of sites sampled, a cost model run twice. The method is shown, and where a figure could not be established it says so instead of estimating.
Teardowns
We took apart 40 Shopify spy extensions
We unpacked forty competitors and read the code. What the all-seeing panels actually request,
what they send home, and which numbers are computed rather than counted.
The Consent Gap Index 2026
How many third-party companies a page contacts before you can consent — measured
across a sample of sites, with the counting rule stated.
Sourcing and cost
The de minimis cliff: ordering more can cost more
per unit
Customs duty is charged on the consignment, not the unit, so crossing €150 applies it to every
item at once. Going from 35 units to 40 raised the landed cost 9.6% each — and the obvious fix
is wrong about as often as it is right.
Comparisons
Shopify spy extensions compared
What each one can actually read, what it asks permission for, and which figures are modelled.
Meta Ad Library tools compared
Permissions, what each can genuinely read from the page, and where the archives come from.
Reference
Alongside the writing there are maintained reference sets, each built from the same corpus: third-party companies seen on real sites, platforms and frameworks, consent platforms, and what differs by top-level domain.