Trying to prevent being profiled? A lost case …

So you might think it is still about Cookies. You probably think the “Do not track” functionality of your browser will stop the advertisers to follow your digital tracks?

Forget about it. The race for the most complete user profiles heated up already quite a while ago. User profiles of today are more than your browsing and online shopping habits only. Today it is about where you go and what you do. It is not enough anymore to a retailer to know what you are shopping online at home. It is not even enough for them to know what you are shopping while on the move. Now it is about everything, the “where”, “what” and “when”. Tracking your habits even when you are not in front of a screen.

To achieve this goal you have to be an integral part of the mobile device of a person. In most cases this will be a mobile phone. In the near futures there could be other wearables or health tracking devices but today the mobile device is the 24-hour companion for most.

So to be able to create a personal users profile you need to be constantly connected to that device. Either by providing the operating system or by providing a software tool that is always online. The operating system war is over: Apple and Google won it by a large margin. Microsoft lost. Facebook and Amazon tried to keep up but failed with their own mobile phones. Amazon at least knows already quite a lot about your spending habits and they started to win some additional ground by selling highly subsidized Kindle tablets. It is still based on Google Android — but they made sure Google does not get the location data like from a Google tablet.

So if you do not get location and usage data by providing the mobile operating system, how can you be still “always online” on a user’s phone?

Messengers!

By design users want messengers to be able to receive messages at all times. And there is a reason why all messengers provide a simple way to send your current location to other users: They want access all geolocation information as well.

Why do you think Microsoft spent a fortune to buy Skype? Just the moment they could see that Windows Mobile would not play a major role in the mobile world? And why did Facebook spent a fortune to buy WhatsApp and is ramping up and promoting their Messenger services? They need to! Microsoft and Facebook lost the OS war, they have to win the messenger war.

So there is a battle out there for your mobile user profile. And 4 companies are doing well so far: Google, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft.

It does not matter anymore what you do to conceal your browsing and shopping habits on a browser level. Ad blockers? Who cares. Deleted cookies? Forget it. The choice of your mobile phone operating system provider and the choice of your messengers decides who knows all your habbits and who does not.