Introduction
Personal data has become one of the hottest commodities in the digital age. Every click, every search, every interaction you take leaves a digital footprint, which follows you around like a lost puppy. Big tech companies are collecting massive amounts of information about you, including Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple, often with little or no knowledge or understanding of the individual.
Digital privacy isn’t an option any longer, it’s a prime concern for anyone maneuvering their life through the internet. This article looks at what big tech knows about you, how they collect that information and what they do with it, and what you can do to protect your privacy.
How Big Tech Collects Your Information
Big tech obtains information from various sources:
- Web Browsing & Search History – Every search term into Google, every website you visit, every link you click, whether it’s from a search result or social media post, all goes into your digital profile.
Web Browsers (Chrome, Safari, and Edge) track your history, some of them save for a specific length of time, even bookmarks, and search preferences.
- Social Media Activity – Every interaction on social media; when using Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok, they are tracking what you like, share, comment on, and for how long you spend looking at posts.
- Location Tracking – Smartphones and apps track GPS location data to identify where you are, and where you steadily go to.
Location data can be used in targeted advertising, as well as mapping services, and analytics.
- Device Data
Manage Your Data With Tech Companies
Big tech companies collect your data for four main reasons:
- Advertising income
The first and simplest reason is monetization. Personalized ads based on your behavior lead to higher engagement and profit margins. - Improvement of products
Data will help companies improve their software, services, or user experience. - Market evaluation
It allows companies to identify consumer trends in order to tie in with market launches, demographic behaviours, etc.. - AI & Machine Learning Applications
New artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies analyze the behaviour of users which leads to predictive algorithms regarding what you will likely purchase, what you’ll prefer and how you’ll vote politically.
4 Risks of Behavioral Data
- No longer personal
Companies use the data for commercial purposes, while we often unknowingly share personal information that may also lead to your data being utilized for political purposes. - Manipulation
Companies can manipulate your behaviour based on your behavioural data on tiktok, which may influence your purchasing decisions, voting behaviours, or overall engagement online. - Identification theft and fraud
The more data that is released from companies because of security breaches opens up more avenues for recognizing sensitive information that may be hacked or stolen for scams, which can lead to financial identity theft. - Psychological dangers
These intentional unrestricted tracking and sharing behaviours don’t affect others personal choices, freedom, individual autonomy and possibly ones mental well-being.
Ways to Protect your Digital Sovereignty
- Strong Passwords & Two Factor Authentication
Create strong passwords as much as humanly possible, you need to remember they are different for each account and ideally use 2FA to properly secure your accounts. - Social Media Sharing Limitations
Consider reviewing your social media privacy settings and exercising consumer literacy before and after oversharing personal identification on the internet. - Use Privacy Diego Browsers and Searches
Switch to a different browser like Brave, DuckDuckGo, or Firefox with an option that limits any tracking or ads. - VPN Services
Utilize a VPN for an alternative layer of protection to encrypt projects from being tracked or your IP address being shared at the same time as protecting without detection.