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There are on average 14 tracking tools per webpage on the UK's most popular sites, according to a study. Privacy solutions provider Truste suggests that means a user typically encounters up to 140 cookies and other trackers while browsing a single site. The research was published less than 40 days before strict rules come into effect governing cookie use. The study was carried out in March and covered the UK's 50 most visited organisations. The firm said that 68% of the trackers analysed belonged to third-parties, usually advertisers, rather than the site's owner. "The high level of third-party tracking that is taking place is certainly an area of question and scrutiny," Dave Deasy, Truste's vice president of marketing, told the BBC. "It's not illegal to do the tracking - the question is whether you are giving consumers enough awareness that it is happening and what you are doing with the data."