The Facebook data scandal - the unauthorized sharing of 87 million people's personal data with political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica - also highlights the ways in which the most popular social network tracks everything we do online.
However, this social media giant is not the only one doing this. Our digital steps are monitored by dozens of companies that collect data (trackers) and most of the most visited sites and applications collect data in real time about our behavior.
It is true that not all trackers are used so that companies can find out everything about us, but most people are not aware of how someone is "watching" them and who has access to their data.
If you are wondering who is following you on the Internet, the answer for most users is that it could be anyone.
Arsenal for spying
There are several ways to track what you do online. Our browser is equipped with a real "arsenal for spying": cookies, flash cookies, pixel weights, among others.
These "weapons of mass data collection" are able to use all the information about our activities from the exact web addresses we visit to the type of device we use.
Some sites use dozens of trackers for different purposes. One tool can help a site owner find out how many visitors there are, but most are used to help companies determine who we are: how old we are, where we live, what we read, what interests us.
An investigation by the Wall Street Journal in 2010 found that the 50 most popular websites in America use an average of 64 trackers.
Too many curious apps
Most of us spend our days using mobile apps, which also spy on us.
Last year, two professors in America, Narseo Valina Rodriguez and Srikant Sundaresan, published a study claiming that seven out of ten applications share personal data with third parties.
"When people install a new Android or iOS app, they have to consent to the use of their personal data. Some of the data apps collect is necessary for them to function - if an app displays a map, it can't work without using GPS to find out where you are. But once you've allowed the app to use that information, its authors can share it with whoever they want, meaning third parties can find out where you are, how fast you're moving, and exactly what you're doing," the study said.
Texts too long
Apps that make their privacy policies public often do so in a very non-transparent way, as the descriptions of how companies use your data are too long and vary from product to product, even when they come from the same company.
Who's going to read all that? A very famous study done in America and Canada shows that people are completely unaware of what they are agreeing to.
When asked to participate in the startup of a new social network (NameDrop), students from a prestigious American college were presented with privacy policies that contained insane requirements, such as the promise of users to "give their first-born child to the social network NameDrop."
Almost 75 percent of the 543 participants did not read these rules. Those who did, spent 73 seconds reading a text that took them at least half an hour to read.
In 2011, research conducted in Britain revealed that only 7 percent of users read privacy policies when signing up for new products and services.
roving "target"
Mobile phones and tablets are constantly recording our location and can share it with anyone they want. Users can choose which apps can track GPS data - maps, for example, but also disable options that track which places you visit most often, as well as turning off location tracking.
In fact, turning off the option that tracks your movements is the advice of cyber security experts. However, studies show that a cell phone can still detect your location.
A team from Princeton University made an experiment in which they proved that it is possible to track the phone's location, even when the location option, GPS and Wi-Fi are turned off.
Last year, the online magazine Quartz revealed that Google collects information about the location of Android users by tracking how many beats mobile phones send to their antennas to access the mobile network.
Google confirmed that they had been collecting this type of information, but that they were deleting data about it and that they had stopped this practice.
Disappearing from the network
The motivation behind tracking comes down to making it easier for people who advertise to find us, but if you're one of those people who find that annoying, there are ways to opt out of these services.
The first thing you can do is enable the "do not follow me" option on the sites you visit, but whether companies will do so depends on their goodwill.
You can use applications that check for trackers in your browser.
In the case of apps, things are a bit more complicated. If you block access to sensitive information on your phone, it may negatively affect the functionality of that application.
Also, if you turn off ads, then you threaten the existence of free apps, because that's the only way developers get paid for their work.
However, there is no such thing as bulletproof protection. In a text written for the self-help site Lifehack, American journalist and writer Ashley Omur published 12 commandments for those who do not want anyone to follow them. The last commandment attracts the most attention:
"For the really paranoid: stop using tech, just use paper, pen, typewriter, face-to-face conversations, as far as photo sharing goes, do it the old-fashioned way."
SOURCE: BBC News in Serbian
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