Is Your Technology Spying on You?
The information in this post sounds a lot like a conspiracy theory, but let me assure you: it’s no conspiracy and it’s not a theory. This is how YOUR technology works.
Have you ever seen an ad for something that felt way too personal or “coincidental” to Something you RECENTLY SEARCHED, Did, or said?
Do you know that you may have given access to an app to track your location, look at all of your pictures or listen to you all the time, even when you aren’t using the app?
There is a populaR quote about social media and Apps:
“If you are not paying for a product, you ARE the product.”
Director of Engineering at Apple, Shanni, shared her personal opinion on technology and privacy.
If you missed our Instagram Live, you can CLICK HERE to watch.
Does watching this quick commercial make you cringe or wonder what you need to do to protect yourself?
If you want to know some quick and easy ways to protect yourself, then take a minute to look through the tips below to better protect your data and ultimately yourself.
Settings. Settings. Settings.
"Why buy the cow if you can get the milk for free”… don’t give your data up unless you know you are getting something *reasonable* in exchange for it!
For some Apps and Websites to have optimal functionality, they will ask for permission to access portions of your data. They will sometimes give you a logical reason for requesting it and should explicitly detail what they will do with it in their T&Cs (Terms and Conditions). But who has time to become a lawyer and understand T&Cs or decide if what they are asking is reasonable? And even more importantly, is it wise to have faith that the company behind this app will only do exactly what they say they will all of the time?* In a country where there is limited regulation protecting what companies can do with our data, how do we best protect ourselves?
*Here is just one instance recently uncovered where a developer didn’t do what they said they were doing. Note, when preparing for this post, after clicking on this article, I immediately started seeing ads for this App in Facebook. Eeeek.
Simple answer: limit what you give, when you give it, and who you give it to.
If you have time to do only one exercise, you should go to your device and review the Privacy Settings. On an iPhone, open Settings > Privacy. (Pro tip: when you open Settings, swipe down on the page to display the Search box for a nice shortcut). I highly encourage you to click through each section and review the Apps that have asked permission to each data/function. Unless you immediately know why an App would need permission, try turning it off and notice if you uncover issues in the Apps performance. You can always go back and give access later if you find you need to.
If you only check 4 things, the most sensitive in my opinion are Location, Microphone, Camera, and Photos (although do your friends a solid and review Contacts as well).
Location. There are very, very few apps or scenarios where giving access to your location gives you as a user enough benefit to give up that kind of personal data. In fact, I cannot think of a single App where you should give access to your Location “Always”. At minimum, consider setting this to “While Using” if you previously had it set to “Always”. For mobility apps (Apple Maps, Google Maps, Strava, etc.), I encourage you set it to “While Using”. Social Media companies really do not need to know where you are. Ever. Never.
Microphone. My suspicion is granting access to your Microphone to unscrupulous developers is where a lot of the eery targeted ads are coming from. Really question any app that needs access to your Microphone to Function.
Photos. I encourage you opt to only share “Selected Photos” for apps you want to share your Photos.
Camera. For Social Media Platforms, consider not providing camera access and recording your content in the camera app and uploading to the Social Media app.
Bonus Points, Tracking: Turn this OFF (i.e. set the slider to grey, not green):
Download (and remove!) your Google data history:
Turn off Google Personal Ads:
https://adssettings.google.com/authenticated
If you use Chrome for web searching, use Incognito mode for Google:
https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/95464?co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop&hl=en
Although with the caveat still:
Your activity isn’t hidden from websites you visit, your employer or school, or your internet service provider.
Safari
If you use a Mac, Safari can do a lot of the work for you:
Safari > Preferences
Privacy:
Definitely select “Prevent cross-site tracking”. You can chose to "Block all Cookies” which may make some sites not work. To “clear your cookies”, click “Manage Website Data":
And then click “Remove All”:
Cookies are opening the ability for a website to track you. If you are presented an option of what to allow, I highly encourage you only accept the functionality Cookies. NEVER accept the tracking cookies.
In Safari it’s also nice to periodically check your Privacy Report to see all that it is saving you from:
Facebook and Instagram
This is probably the most contentious and where you have to use your personal comfort level to decide what you want to do. If you are limiting the access of your data to all of your Apps and blocking tracking cookies online, ads will inherently become slightly less “creepy” because they are capturing less and less of your data. However, if you want to go a step further then you should turn off Personalized Ads. These sites do not make it easy to find these settings (by design, this will make them lose money).
https://www.facebook.com/adpreferences/ad_settings/?entry_product=privacy_shortcuts
Data about your activity from partners: Turn OFF
Categories used to reach you: Turn OFF
Ads shown off of Facebook: NOT Allowed
Settings > Ads
Data About Your Activity From Partners > OFF
You have an Android?
Here is a great summary from Duck Duck Go (a 'privacy focused' Search Engine company to consider as an alternative if you want to ditch Google).
Want to know more?
Read up on Privacy and how some companies and countries are thinking about it. Companies like Apple are very open about their stance on customer Privacy and make it very easy for customers to control their data (exponentially more so than their competitors!).
https://www.apple.com/privacy/
https://www.apple.com/privacy/control/
https://www.apple.com/privacy/features/
Overview of GDPR by the Wall Street Journal if interested: