Where of What Is Getting Done with Your Data As a Consumer All adverts that appear online indicate that they only gather a consumer’s name and phone number but later on, Companies are in the business of making money; They purchase consumer data in large quantity; Thanks to Facebook allowing data portability, Companies engage in marketing analysis to locate the places where buyers make purchases frequently; Companies use data analysis to pinpoint whom to give discounts to or offer a rebate; Personal data is considered one of the most valuable assets in the world, particularly in the current cradle of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Regardless of whether we are buying products online, using a social networking site, or even searching for some information – we are giving out data to companies. But what will happen to the data? How is it collected stored and used? And, most importantly, how can we ensure secure and private communication in an open world, which is full of connections? This blog will cover the treatment of personal data by companies and measures to take in order to maintain privacy on the World Wide Web.
How Your Data is Collected ?
1. Cookies
Cookies refer to pieces of data that are stored on a user’s machine by the website he/she visits. They are intended to retain information about yourself such as user ids and passwords, products you have in your shopping cart and choices. While they do make different aspects of browsing easier, cookies also follow your actions from site to site and form a detailed picture of your habits and inclinations.
First-party cookies: These may be directly set by the website that you are visiting and are helpful in the enhancement of users’ experience.
Third-party cookies: These are set by third parties (advertisers, analytics services) and allow you to be tracked across websites for advertising purposes.
2. Mobile Apps
Smartphone apps will save a user’s personal information including the location, contacts, photos, and browsing history. Surprisingly, in many cases, user themselves agree on the application asking for permission to access more detailed information. It is even worse since some of these applications update your location even when you are not actively using the app, and feed information to the app’s server while doing that.
Location tracking: GPS-based services obtain coordinates of customers’ current location, which could be further sold to advertisement companies or used to offer services tailored to the location of the client.
Usage analytics: Apps record how users engage with them, a process that involves gathering of behavioral information that is frequently applied to enhance services or market commodities.
3. Social Media
In social media, when you join a group, use a certain social media website and create your account, you have to share your identity such as your name, age, location and other interests. These sites include: Facebook, Instagram and twitter collect this data so as to analyze it then provide you with content, adverts, and even people or groups to follow.
Profile information: Your status updates, commenting, sharing, posting, repetitive likes, dislikes, profile picture, and even the messages exchanged between individuals are crucial for companies interested in specific groups of targets.
Engagement tracking: Each like, share or comment contributes to creating more efficient tactics for users’ engagement and ads monetization by companies.
4. E-Commerce Sites
Whenever people decide to shop online, then electronic commerce vendors amass information like your past activities on the web, your monetary information, and your buying conduct. Gathering this information serves not just the purpose of catering to individual’s preferences during their shopping sprees but also to sharpen business marketing strategies among the establishments.
Purchase history: Information gathered about you can be employed to decide on the type of products you can purchase or even where the advertisements should be directed.
Credit card information: Although this is normally encrypted, sometimes there indeed can be leaks, and confidential info – financial – may become exposed.
Privacy Policies – Ways to Manage Your Privacy
1. Browser Extensions
There are some really helpful browser plugins you can install to regulate the amount of data that websites gather about you. Extensions such as uBlock Origin or Privacy Badger can block these trackers and ads, deleting a company’s capability to track you across different websites.
2. VPN (Virtual Private Network)
A VPN helps to conceal one’s IP address meaning it becomes harder for one to be tracked by the website one is visiting. This is especially beneficial when connecting to public Wi-Fi as it threads your internet connections making your data safe from hackers.
3. Privacy Settings within Apps and Website
Almost all applications and sites have the functionality of privacy in which data collection is controlled or restricted. For instance, in social networks, you have the option of who accesses your posts, location tracking, or data sharing with apps.
Google Account: Google lets you decide what data is collected: search history, location, and history of YouTube visits, for example. You can also revisit and remove many of the services data through the Google My Activity feature.
Facebook: Facebook has privacy features for users to set post audience, view data shared from other websites and applications, and settings for ads.
4. Encrypted Messaging Apps
Self-created, secure and encrypted message applications such as Signal or WhatsApp will ensure that your messages cannot be intercepted by a third party. Encryption is the process of making the message unreadable by an unauthorized person even if he gets to see the actual message.
Guidelines For Safeguarding One’s Online Personal
1. Two Factor Authentication and creation of strong passwords
Probably the easiest thing to do is to ensure that you give out very strong and different passwords for each of the accounts that you have. Applications such as LastPass or 1Password can not only create passwords with high complexity, but also store them. By allowing the multiple-factor authentication, an additional protection – the second factor – is added, for example, through text messages or an application for authentication.
2. Be Cautious with Public Wi-Fi
When using public Wi-Fi networks, you are likely to be connecting to an open network and anyone can tap into your information. Do not use the systems that require the person’s account information like banking, email, and others while connected to it. It is recommended that if needed, use a VPN to encrypt the flow of traffic and guard the information.
3. Always Check the Apps Permission
At some point you may find yourself wondering what kind of permissions you have given into the various apps you use. From time to time monitor and withdraw unnecessary permissions like ability to track your location or access to your camera, microphone, or contacts. It can also help stop applications from gathering more data than what is necessary.
4. Limit Social Media Sharing
This urging to make sensible depiction on the media means that everyone should be careful about the information being shared in social media. Skip putting up info such as your complete date of birth, your home address, or even the fact that you are going to be out of town soon. It can be used by Cybercriminals for identity theft or social engineering incidences.
5. Monitor Your Online Footprint
Occasionally use a search engine and typing in your name, or some of your private details to find out what information is freely available on the web. In case you discover something asymptotic, you can report it to the web site administrator to have it erased. As well, there are useful tools, such as Google Alerts that can inform you when the content, mentioning you appears online.
The Increasing Importance of the Information Related to Personal Data
1. Data as Currency
Personal data in the modern economy is as valuable as money; despite the fact that we do not actually see it and physically touch it. Organizations depend on the information they gather with the people, and some of the organizations provide their services for free asking for individuals’ information. Most of the platforms such as Google, Facebook offer their services for free and in return get to harvest and sell your data to advertisers.
2. In the increase in use of the internet to advertise products, there is a shift between personalization and privacy.
Most people like the idea of personalization, which some firms provide; for instance, recommending specific products or serving relevant content on the users’ feeds. But again, this is that so-called comfort at the cost of your privacy. The more ‘Big Data’ that one allows companies to chew on, the better the customized service—the larger the possibility that one’s data will be misused.
How Information is Stored and Processed ?
1. Data Warehousing
Once collected, your data is stored in large databases which are called data warehouses. These warehouses accumulate vast and structured data that are useful in analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence practices among businesses. The information kept here is also useful for businesses, but such warehouses can become vulnerable to cyberattacks, thus security is crucial.
2. Cloud Storage
More and more businesses are shifting towards the concept of cloud storage, where the data can be accessed from a server located on the internet through other companies like Amazon Web Service or Microsoft Azure. For example, cloud storage saves space and is easy to use, but who owns the files and are they protected from hackers?
3. Data Encryption
It is done both while your data is warehoused and as it is in transit from one company to another or to your company in the case of customers. However, not all types of encrypting is completely secure from hacking. For example, while low or the latest encryption is often secure against cyber threats. You should also be be aware if the service you frequently apply use such trustworthy encryption system as AES-256.
Risks of Data Breaches
1. Identity Theft
Companies failing to handle the data well, means a large risk of the company being involved in identity theft. Most importantly identity data comprises of sensitive details like Social Security numbers, credit card information, login credentials, and among others criminal can access and manipulate the data and use it to address identity theft by opening accounts in your name or make fraudulent transactions.
2. Data Breach Incidents
In the last several years, numerous large-scale organizations have been hacked attacked that led publicity of millions of users’ personal information. Data hacks that affect large corporations such as Equifax, Marriott and yahoo have seen personal data from credit card digits to social security numbers exposed. Knowing who gets your data after a breach is essential—after a breach, your data ends up across the globe with criminals and on the dark web.
3. Loss of Trust
A leakage of data is always costly and not only harms businesses’ reputations but also can lead to financial repercussions in the form of fines and lawsuits. The moment customers feel that their data is not safe then they will not be able to continue using the service in question and thus may lead to financial loss. In its effective use for businesses, it presents a challenge of how much data to capture without losing the customers.
Conclusion
The generation and collection of data has now becoming the order of the day, thus the need to protect your privacy. This highlights the need to know how much and to whom you are willing to give your data since this is used by companies in all manner of ways from advertising to improving their products.
