What do tech giants know about you?
Dozens of companies use your data to target you. They may say it’s anonymous, but the data shows how personal it really is.
How do companies such as Facebook and Google sustain a business model in which users don’t pay for their services? The answer is — for these companies we are the product, not the customer. Their customers are advertisers and their platforms are designed to help advertisers forensically target us. This is not confined to the data we enter when we register with these platforms, but also the data we generate when using them, and in some cases even outside of them — all made possible with the vast tracking networks some of these companies have built over the years to follow us around the web.
It is not just Facebook and Google. With the majority of services we use online that are “free” — including most social media services (Snapchat, WhatsApp, Twitter) and even email – our data is the product. A product that is earning billions for tech giants and nothing for us.
That is just how deeply embedded data harvesting, retargeting, cookie sharing and other ethically ambiguous practices are in digital marketing. What is equally shocking is how much these companies are able to infer about our personal lives based on the data they collect.
Do you know what they know?
Be prepared to freak out!
They can predict very personal details about your life with crazy accuracy
Facebook can predict how intelligent you are, how satisfied you are with your life, and whether you are emotionally stable — simply based on Big Data analysis of your likes. Facebook can also predict with scary accuracy if your relationship will last based on your status updates and your activities.
Google stores your YouTube history, so they probably know whether you’re going to be a parent soon, if you’re a conservative, if you’re a progressive, if you’re Jewish, Christian, or Muslim, if you’re feeling depressed or suicidal…
They know where you are, where you have been and where you are going
Almost all big tech companies store location tracking data from your mobile device.
If you have an android phone and have had your location tracking switched on, it has also probably deduced where you live and work. It is also likely Google has stored your location every time you turned on your phone. In fact, you can see a timeline of where you have been from the very first day you started using Google on your phone.
Facebook stores every time you log in to Facebook, where you logged in from, what time, and from what device. Even Foursquare, once known for gamifying place check-ins has quietly emerged as a location data giant, tracking your location through an API integrated into multitude of apps and services that have location services.
These companies sell, use or analyze the data to cater to advertisers and retail outlets seeking insights into consumer behavior. It’s a hot market, with sales of location-targeted advertising alone reaching an estimated $21 billion this year. IBM has gotten into the industry, with its purchase of the Weather Channel’s apps and prominent investors in location start-ups include Goldman Sachs and Peter Thiel, the PayPal co-founder.
Location information can reveal some of the most intimate details of a person’s life — whether you’ve visited a psychiatrist, whether you went to an A.A. meeting, who you might date…
They know what events you are attending
If you are using Google calendar, then Google knows which events you attended, and when or where you are going on holiday. Same applies to Facebook if you have marked yourself as attending an event. What is creepy is that sometimes these companies store data regarding those events even after the events have finished. For example, Facebook records both events you’ve joined and events you’ve been invited to.
Many people would never assume that this data has any value but it’s useful for companies to figure out how busy you are, how you spend your time and how organized you are.
They know who you talk to, who you hang out with and who you have been emailing
Google stores every email you ever sent and every email that has ever been sent to you, including the ones you have deleted or categorized as spam.
It also stores information on every app and extension you use and knows how often you use them, where you use them, and who you use them to interact with.
That means they know who you talk to, and what you talk about. It also knows who you’ve been with, and when.
They know everything you’ve ever searched — and deleted
Of course Google knows what you have searched and stores all of your search history across all of your devices. So do Bing and Yahoo and most other search engines. That can mean that, even if you delete your search history and phone history on one device, search egnines may still have your data saved from other devices.
They know how you spend your money
Facebook buys data about your offline purchases. This means that the next time you pay for a burrito with your credit card, Facebook can learn about this transaction and match this credit card number with the one you added in Messenger.
They can access your webcam and microphone
The data Facebook collects includes tracking where you are, what applications you have installed, when you use them, what you use them for, access to your webcam and microphone at any time, your contacts, your emails, your calendar, your call history, the messages you send and receive, the files you download, the games you play, your photos and videos, your music, your search history, your browsing history, even what radio stations you listen to.
It may seem obvious at this point, but mobile apps — not just social media services — can vacuum up a crazy amount of data with every interaction without our full awareness. iOS and Android apps are capable of accessing your phone’s microphone, cameras, camera roll, location services, calendar, contacts, motion sensors, speech recognition, and social media accounts.
“Next time an app asks you to share your address book, there is a 99-percent chance that this app is going to mine your address book to get new users, spam your friends, improve ad targeting and sell email addresses to marketing companies, all without your permission.”
What’s next?
If you have a Google + account and want to scare yourself, go ahead and download all your Google + data and see just how much Google knows about you. You can do the same with Facebook.
And then ask yourself: “What about my other accounts?”
You would never let the government or a corporation put cameras/microphones in your home or a microchiped location tracker on you — why should your online privacy be any different?
It’s time for us to take more active ownership of our data and gain more control over what is shared about us, where and when.
Datacy is a platform designed to allow individuals to take control of their data. We’re building a set of products that will allow you to collect your data, store it securely and sell it directly to data buyers all over the world. To find out more, visit our website.
