Delhi:Have you ever had a conversation on your phone about 'something' and later you saw an advertisement on various social networking sites, search engines etc. Trust me it isn't a coincidence.
Privacy entails two types of information i.e Personally-Identifying Information (PII) or non-PII information. PII refers to the information that can be used to identify an individual, for example - age and physical address alone could identify who an individual is without explicitly disclosing their name, as these two factors are unique enough to typically identify a specific person. Non-PII is information that cannot be used on its own to trace or identify a person, so basically the opposite of PII.
People upload their entire vacation photo album to social networking sites. You purchased a home, your address and the amount you spent are public records the moment you post it Probably we thought the nature of online purchases was completely secure, the personal-care products she’d purchased on e-commerce websites were available for the world to peruse.
Col Inderjeet very strongly believes and says, " The more personal information you make available online, the more vulnerable you become. Everything you say anywhere can be collected and can be used to track, stalk, steal, and monitor your activity. Each and every step you take in the web is recorded, like your texts, calls, video chats, your browsing history, your bank details, and a lot more than you imagine."
When you are online nothing is private, the privacy is gone, and your digital footprint is all over the internet which anyone can track easily. Your data is open to your service providers which are accessible anytime, they can also convince you to share it with partner websites. So, where is the privacy? You actually have no control over personal data. You have almost no privacy at all. When privacy is compromised, though, the problems can go far beyond the exposure of illegal activity or embarrassing information.
Your Internet service provider (ISP) - the company that supplies your Internet connection - knows not only what Web sites you visit, who you emailed, and who emailed you, but the contents of these visitations and correspondences. It can provide the government with a tremendous amount of power over its people, undermine trust, and make people vulnerable to abuse of their information.
Giant companies, all collect data on what you do on your browser. What you are searching for, what kind of person you are etc. What do they do, after that? They indirectly sell YOU!
They sell all your personal data to the marketing companies. They can share your personal information with other parties and use your content for all their existing or future services. And, did you know that one of the major social networking websites can use your identity in ads that are shown to others and license your content to third parties? You might've not read the Terms and Conditions upon registration. There are indeed services that will misuse your personal information even though you don't give your consent, but most companies clearly state in their Terms you agree on that they are entitled to sell your data or use it some other way. But who really reads the Terms and Conditions nowadays?
Col Inderjeet very strongly adds, “YOU ARE NO MORE A USER OF THESE SITES, YOU ARE A PRODUCT”
Social networking sites, search engines, etc can see what we do on their websites or platforms. They use a variety of techniques to accomplish this, including tracking (and geo-locating) your IP address to obtain the actual IP address of people using a virtual private network (a VPN), browser fingerprinting, tracking pixels and a host of other techniques designed to identify the user.
They usually collect pseudonymously information about your computer and about your visits to and use of this website (including your IP address, geographical location, browser type, and version, operating system, referral source, length of visit, page views and website navigation paths. Your browsing history is linked to your identity and is nearly never private, even when you've gone incognito.
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The data that can be pulled from your browser paints a picture that is horrendously frightening. They share anonymized or aggregated data containing your personal data to third parties and these third parties will have access to anonymized data and will be able to identify you as an individual. All the top websites track visitors using various website analysis tools, including the campaign websites of politicians who voted to keep their privacy status quo.
Ideally, the incognito mode or private mode would actually make your browsing private. Unfortunately, the incognito mode doesn't give as much privacy as you might expect. While in incognito mode, cookies are stored only in temporary files and deleted when the session ends, websites can still use identifiers to track you. This is called browser fingerprinting. Though fingerprinting, websites look at different characteristics such as your user time zone, plugin list, and screen resolution. While browser fingerprinting s not always accurate because more devices can share the same fingerprint, studies show that 75% of desktop devices can be uniquely identified.
When you sign up for webinars, newsletters, and/or other marketing materials, they collect information about you. This includes personal details such as name, email address, company name, and possibly other information relevant to the offerings, such as technology interests. In case, you have your name tied to your machine or installed applications it can often store registrant identity. That means a porn site can pull your first and last name, username, stored cookies, etc. This often happens when targeting active offensive intelligence operations. This is even worse on mobile devices, almost all of which have built-in GPS sensors that Apps (and the operating system) can use to obtain your minute-to-minute physical location.
Smartphones are quickly becoming our wallets, our cameras, our notebooks, even our personal safes. When you install new apps on mobile phones, your phone asks you to confirm the app's access requirements. Typically, apps need to access things like your files (to save things), your camera (to take photos), and maybe GPS (to provide location-specific content). Some apps may need access to even more: your contacts, your profile information, etc. While it's just about impossible to use a smartphone without giving apps access to some of these things, you shouldn't just agree to every app's access terms. Many apps make money selling your information to advertisers, so it's not surprising they want more access than they really need. For instance, does your flashlight app need to know your location? If you don't like the access an app is requesting, look around for a similar app that requires less access.