5 Quick Privacy Fixes for Social Media

How to protect your privacy in a data-driven society

THE GIST: When we use digital services through our laptops or mobile phones, we leave digital traces that can be retained, repacked and accessed by third parties. Protecting your privacy in the age of big data is not an easy task, but fortunately there are a number of tools available to ordinary Internet users and Internet activists to control who has access to their data to evade mass surveillance and protect their privacy. Here are a few quick things you can do right now to get started.

As somebody who is studying the social implications of the Internet I get a lot of questions about privacy on social media. Even though I am an ardent supporter of the data economy, I believe that users should make conscious choices about their data privacy and that Internet companies need to be more transparent about their data practices. In some cases, however, user data is collected without their knowledge or consent — and that in itself is a problem. Of course, this is especially troublesome for young people who rarely understand the long-term implications of their online activities, which makes them more vulnerable to potentially harmful repercussions later in their lives. Just watch this TED talk by Glenn Greenwald on why privacy matters.

Everyone knows that privacy settings on social media are important, but many people don’t know how to get started making changes to protect themselves, their friends and their family members. If you go to a local Cryptoparty event, you will learn how to use alternative encrypted messaging services such as Signal (formerly RedPhone and TextSecure) and how to use PGP encryption. These are advanced privacy protection measures, but what if you just want to continue using all your social network sites and messaging apps on your laptop or phone as before? Well, here’s how you can get started:

Step 1: Decouple social actions from adverts

Go to https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=ads and have a look at the different options for advertising on Facebook. If you don’t want your name to appear next to an advert on Facebook, you’d have to choose to decouple social actions from ads. Of course, people want to know what their friends like so if you prefer to openly show your support for a particular brand or person, feel free to change this setting accordingly. Google provides a similar set of settings here https://www.google.com/settings/ads

Step 2: Revise everything Facebook knows about you

Go to https://www.facebook.com/ads/preferences/edit/ and discover all the data points that are used to construct your data identity on Facebook. You can either delete all these categories or make them more accurate — it’s your choice! If you delete all these data points, you’ll still see ads on Facebook — they just won’t be based on your interests, your likes or recent interactions. If you make your data profile more accurate, your data will also be more valuable, and you will see more personalized ads across the Web.

Step 3: Activate Do-Not Track features

Most mobile and desktop web browsers like Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox today offer the option to express a preference not to be tracked by web sites. While this Do-Not Track feature is not mandatory for the websites you visit, it is still a good way to signal to advertising networks and other sites that you wish to opt-out of tracking for purposes like behavioural advertising. You’ll find this feature in the advanced settings menu of your browser of choice and you can activate or deactivate it at any time.

Step 4: Modify your birthday and location of birth

Sadly, identity theft has recently become the fastest growing crime in the digital world. Your full real name, your real birthday and your real place of birth are important personal data that identity thieves crave. Of course, it is up to you to reveal this information to your friends or not. However, maybe you want to consider at least providing a different birthday and a different location of birth on social media? Think about it! Again, it’s your choice.

Step 5: Opt-out from data brokerage

Personal data is valuable to marketers and other agencies — and that is why it is often collected and sold by data brokers. These data brokers collect a wide variety of data about people’s interests, buying habits, online behaviour, home addresses, finances, health etc. There are strong arguments both in favour and against these practices, but if you want to minimize the amount of personal data that is traded go to Stopdatamining.me This website maintains an up-to-date master list of currently 50 data broker companies and provides detailed opt-out forms to get your personal information removed from these data re-sellers. The problem is that you’d have to complete an opt-out form for each individual company and this may take a while.

Despite the Snowden revelations, few educational programmes exist and, there are still no relevant institutional frameworks and insufficient opportunities for young people to build practical privacy skills to critically reflect on their daily online routines. If you are interested in learning more about how to protect your privacy, check out the Security in-a-Box toolkit by the Tactical Tech Collective, who have compiled a comprehensive guide to digital security for activists and human rights defenders throughout the world. I also highly recommend the Me & My Digital Shadow project (also developed by the Tactical Tech Collective) as well as the information portal on the global Cryptoparty website that lists a number of tools and techniques that you’ll find useful for your online privacy and security. Finally, I have recently published another post on the next decade of data science and what it means for industry, academia and society, which has been re-posted to the LSE Impact Blog. I’d appreciate your feedback and let me know if you’re working in a similar area of privacy activism #mylifemydata