Privacy is an issue. How much of one? You may not want to read this.
In certain ways I wish I never read Facebook’s privacy policy. It’s content and vagueness make me angry enough, and it doesn’t tell the whole story.
I’ll kick it right off bluntly with something that should surprise you.
They are getting data from our apps whether you have the app on your phone or not.
Wait, what?
4 Companies Stealing Your Info
Most websites you visit connect to 4 companies. They reach out to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. You may not have an account, but you have multiple identifiers on your computer, such as the type of browser, OS version, IP address, and so on.
Throughout your time on the internet, this can be used to advertise to you. This is the obvious reason, because it’s so blatant.
What they fail to disclose is the reason they are collecting the data. They’ll tell you they’re collecting it in the privacy policy, and admit that, but they won’t say what for.
What they are doing is building a profile on you. The services you actually sign into like your Google account get remembered as one of the fields of data that is registered.
So you can login to a different device with a different IP address, and it could be on your iPhone instead of your laptop, and it will link to you based on those common criteria.
Google Analytics
It’s bad enough Google has already been a culprit of gathering data, and they still have their Analytics software running rampant on these websites still to this day.
What is scary about Google Analytics? Well Google Analytics will blatantly tell you what it does. It’s used as a marketing tool to get information about people that visit your site.
Because normal people use it to build their websites, they aren’t afraid of mentioning it. It seems innocent enough, a company wanting to know it’s consumers.
But what happens when Google Analytics is put in the wrong hands? It is doing more than profiling you to see what stuff you buy so you can catch the next sale.
A website, any website, even that fishy one you clicked in your email, can have this. If someone wants to know information about you, the best thing they can do is simply send you to their website. “Well it’s got https:// that means it’s secure right?”
Google Analytics lets the web domain owner know what websites you went to before you decided to land on theirs. It’s apparently done so they can see where their ads to lead you to the website do the best.
They’ve got any profile information on you, especially bad if you logged into something as simple as your GMail. They know what kind of device you have. They even know where you go when you leave the website.
Cookies, trackers, we won’t get into that, but the vast amount of means companies have to track us and know intimate details of our lives is astonishing.
Is this what the internet has came down to?
What’s the Reason?
Everything, and I mean everything you do is logged to a data center. Why? No one knows. Yet. Most believe it’s to have control over us and be able to predict our behavior in the future. To know what makes us tick. To manipulate.
I didn’t find this out until I took a cybersecurity class and played with a network monitor. I asked the question, why is it talking to these companies when I’m not logged into them?
We really need to be careful with the amount of information we share on our devices. Even what we casually browse.
Spotify Strikes Today
From something that happened just today I can give you an example. You can call it convenient, or you can think this amount of “knowing” by a device should never exist. I’m starting to lean to the latter.
I wanted to start a Spotify account, and since I have a student email account it’s cheaper. I downloaded Spotify and got the free trial. The first thing Spotify does is have you select artists that you are interested in.
Now, the only thing I really listen to is rap. Lo and behold, nothing came up but rap artists. I’m thinking to myself, how does it know that? Where did it get this data from? At one point in time I had to have played videos on YouTube or something, but it’s getting the data from somewhere.
Awareness On the Internet
Social media advertising sends me on a rant. It’s just something I feel everyone should be aware of. Maybe it’s better to be blind to it. But I think we should know how much of our personal information is being marketed to companies.
If someone like a big corporate employer wants to hire you or you’re being investigated for something, they’ve got a stack of data ready. To ruin your life if they want to. It prevents activists and turns people starting movements into dissidents.
Why don’t people like knowing this information and shut off people that share this information? Because we are trained by the media to call them crazy.
All because we have good faith in the system.
Be careful.
