In the early days of the commercial internet, websites just used cookies to track.
Today, tracking has become much deeper and more sophisticated. The advertising tech industry has developed new ways to track users. NB: what I call the advertising tech industry is basically Facebook, Google and a myriad of data brokers or “consumer intelligence” (nice euphemism) companies.
The key to programmatic advertising, this entire ad industry upon which the entire internet as we know it today runs off of, is IDENTITY.
It monitors and scoops up all the information about everything people do on the internet, i.e., all the big data. But then they need to associate actions and data and insight with individual identities (if you visit YouTube everyday from your home, office, cafe and gym and also do so from your laptop, mobile, tablets and computer, those are all disparate tidbits of info that need to be unified and linked under your identity for it to be valuable information).
So the key for a data industry players now is all about managing the unique user identities/profiles, each of which they will gather and add behavioral tracking and other data to.
In their systems, I have a profile, you have a profile, etc… but not a profile in the sense that we have made an account with the data company, but rather based on the dossiers they have on all of us.
Here is an interesting article listing out some key ID data companies. They are the ones that compile and maintain shadow identities of people.
The article outlines how each company creates an ID (by email address, IP address, postal address, cookies, device software/hardware information, combination of these, etc…).
Here is a graph summarising the sources contributing to building profiles.
This graph helps you to take action to protect your privacy for each of the items listed above.
- Email:
- For as much as a cup of coffee a day, you can subscribe to ProtonMail, the most secure email on the planet. ProtonMail even allows you to create aliases email addresses connected to your main email. So you never have to reveal your real email anymore.
- SimpleLogin is a great solution that let you create as many email aliases as you want. I use it A LOT! It also allows you to create your own subdomain name (i.e., what comes after the “at” in an email address, something like “user.aleeas.com”). From there, you can make up an alias by placing the name of the newsletter, shopping site or delivery company (or anything else) before the “at” (something like “amazon at user.aleeas.com”). All emails will land in your inbox, but your REAL email (and therefore your identity) is protected. Check SimpleLogin documentation for more info.
- Phone Number: you can subscribe to services that give you alias phone numbers that you can use for online purchases.
- Name: never give your full name when you subscribe to newsletter or browse the internet. Most of the time initials will suffice.
- Postal address: this one is harder to hide, but you can consider using a PO Box.
- IP Address: use a reliable VPN, and remember, if you do not pay for the service, your data is your payment! So again, pay to get reliable, secure services. ProtonMail has a very good VPN. They have a package available that bundles email, VPN, aliases etc. Check their website, they often have special promotions.
- Browser activity: use safe browsers such as TOR, Mullvad Browser or Brave.
- Device Data: check your privacy settings, disable location services for all apps, and only enable the one that REALLY need it when you use the app.
- First party cookies: use safe browsers such as TOR, Mullvad Browser or Brave.
- Third-party cookies: most browsers allow you to stop third party cookies (although I would not trust any browser that belongs to a big tech company).
Check the previous posts on this blog for more privacy tips.