WhaleSlide’s Data Detox — Day 2
Welcome to Day 2 of our week-long Data Detox Series. If you missed out on Day 1 you can catch up here!
Yesterday tackled the issue of the ‘ghosts of internet past’, the information other people can see by searching for you online, and how to exert some control over this. Today’s detox is all about the power of the internet behemoths — Google and Facebook.
Google is so ubiquitous in our everyday lives that it has become a verb; it’s hardly surprising when you consider the number of products they offer including Chrome, Search, Cloud, Docs, Gmail, Translate, Scholar, YouTube and Maps. What you may not realise is that your online activity is recorded by Google, though they do allow you to have access to this recorded data. By logging into myactivity.google.com, you can view your activity including searches you’ve made, YouTube videos you’ve watched, and destinations looked up and visited on Google Maps (yep, seriously). You can also view data from connected devices, such as your smartphone or tablet, and download any archived data.
The good news is that you can delete this data if you wish, either by individual items, by topic (such as all Google Maps data), or you can simply delete all of it. Next you can undertake Google’s privacy checkup which gives you greater control over your data. You can also choose to limit what Google records of your activity in the future. Sign out and move forwards safe in the knowledge that you’re more in control of your Google profile, and consider diversifying your data lifestyle by using a search engine that doesn’t harvest or sell your data, or profile you online (like us or DuckDuckGo!). The same also applies to your browser; privacy-conscious options include Firefox or Chromium.
As with Google, it’s hard to avoid using social media. Almost everyone we know has an account on at least one social media platform (often several), and it allows you to connect with people all over the world quickly and easily. However, it’s a huge collector of personal data, and it’s therefore necessary to consider how much you’re (knowingly or unknowingly) sharing with the world via your social media accounts.
On Facebook, check your privacy settings, which allow you to control who can see your future posts, your contact details, and whether search engines can show your profile in a search of your name by someone else. Facebook also allows you to control who can post on your timeline (no more weird memes from your mum — she doesn’t understand them anyway?) and who can see posts you’ve been tagged in by other people.
Next, check Facebook’s activity log, and delete as many items as you dare! We suggest setting yourself a target — you won’t miss the banal posts and silly comments in a week’s time and the online detox might even make you feel all smug and cleansed from within (NB: we do not guarantee self-satisfaction). Check any unflattering, offensive or embarrassing pictures and un-tag yourself — whilst you’re at it you could also do your friends a favour and un-tag them from your pics too. Utilise Facebook’s “You have memories” function to delete and tidy up your feed day-by-day and delete anything you don’t want visible anymore.
Whilst these tips are primarily about Facebook, the same principles can be applied to most other forms of social media, so set yourself a challenge to clean up your accounts one at a time over a period of weeks throughout January.
That’s it for Day 2 of our Data Detox Series, we hope you’ve found it useful! Share your detox journey with your friends on social media by sharing and tweeting using the hashtag #WhaleSlideDataDetox.
