The internet of today can be called a big spying machine. We regularly visit Facebook, Twitter, Google and Skype. We post many things, but what about the things we don’t share online? Well, all the sites and advertisement companies probably have those data. How? Using behavioral tracking.
What is Behavioral Tracking?
Behavioral tracking refers to a range of technologies and techniques used by online website publishers and advertisers aimed at increasing the effectiveness of advertising, using user web-browsing behavior information, the websites you visit, the apps you use and anything you do online.
Psychology tricks that actually work
How does it affect me?
When we visit Facebook or other websites, they store a cookie (a small data sent from a website and stored on your web browser that contains some information). So, all the websites you visit, all the searches you do, even your mouse movements they are being watched. Worst part is, logging out from Facebook and such website isn’t enough. These data are pulled by the advertisement company and anyone who needs them, so you are the product of worth a billion of dollars and it’s all legal.
Should I be bothered?
You may think you have no personal data in internet, and you don’t have to worry about that. Well do one thing, go to http://profileengine.com and search for yourself, did you open an account there? Yes, our data are being pulled without us knowing it, and we don’t know what exactly are being pulled in. In future, it may affect your job, your relationship, your pride in society and well your children; they might be an object in future that is a data source. So, this is the time to stand up for yourself and your future, if you don’t raise your voice no one is going to stop it for you.
How to prevent it?
If you are truly scared and bothered by this, what more can be done in internet is the man in keyboard has superpower that is fed by you. So, to prevent it you got to change your online behavior. Use the tools that don’t track you, take a second to read what you are sharing before you agree to share, create awareness to people and raise your voice to the tech giants. You can use the sites or browsers such as Firefox, DuckDuckGo, Google, Reddit, and Twitter that have all joined in the support to neutralize the net.
Use DuckDuckGo to do your online searches instead of Google or Bing. You can also use Firefox instead of Chrome or Internet Explorer and use security plugins like Ghostery that shows you what services in the website pull your data and you can turn them off or self-destructing cookie that deletes the cookie when you exit websites. You can also turn on ‘do not track me system’.
The author is a co-founder of Saedi Works.
