Hey readers!
Today I am writing about a topic that everyone should care about. If you use the internet or social media daily, this one is for you!
Have you ever been on social media, minding your business, when suddenly an ad that is just a little too personal pops up on your feed?
It’s not fun! It feels like someone is watching over your shoulder. So today I am going to answer the question: “Why and how does this happen?”
Internet privacy is how much of your personal information remains private when you are on the internet. This can include financial information, browsing history, and personal preferences. Internet privacy is also known as digital privacy or online privacy.
We are constantly sharing data about ourselves on platforms we use. Google uses your birthday to make sure you get age-appropriate ads. When you like a photo on Instagram it will suggest similar ads containing products connected to it. When you visit a website you are sharing data: your location through IP, your habits (how long you spend on a page, what you click on etc.). Similarly, search engines collect both of these in addition to search history and cookies.
Companies collect this data and create a “profile” on all of us to give them an idea on our preferences from social media to browsing, from shopping to political stances. Sometimes this data is sold to third parties, and sometimes it is used directly by the company, for say targeted ads.
In addition to all of this, if you haven’t disabled virtual assistants on your phone or other devices(think Siri, being able to say “Hey Google” or Alexa) your assistant is constantly listening for a trigger word. It should be treated as a search engine.
There are 3 types of ads I’d like to mention:
Social Media Advertising
These are ads within your chosen platform. These change based on your and your friends’ actions within an app or platform.
Behavioral Advertising
Sites like Amazon will use your previous purchasing habits to find the perfect ad to go with the thing you previously bought.
Search Engine Advertising
Self explanatory, but ads are based on keywords that you type into search engines.
By using these sites and apps you consent to this collection. I took a look at Twitter, Google and Etsy’s Privacy Policies as examples to see how transparent they were about the collection. Most of this post is been about how this information is used, in this section I’m only highlighting what is collected.
Twitter breaks up the data they collect on us into 3 categories (pictured above). Relevant to this post are 1.2 and 1.3. Twitter’s policy warrants them to collect data about tweets you make and other content you post. They keep track of your lists, bookmarks, and communities you are a part of. They track your interactions with other users’ content, like retweets, likes, shares, replies. This even includes if other users mention or tag you in a post + vice versa. They monitor how you interact with others users on twitter:
Usage Information. We collect information about your activity on Twitter, including: Tweets and other content you post (including the date, application, and version of Twitter) and information about your broadcast activity (e.g., TwitterLive or Spaces), including broadcasts you’ve created and when you created them, your lists, bookmarks, and communities you are a part of.
Your interactions with other users’ content, such as retweets, likes, shares, replies, if other users mention or tag you in content or if you mention or tag them, and broadcasts you’ve participated in (including your viewing history, listening, commenting, speaking, and reacting).
How you interact with others on the platform, such as people you follow and people who follow you, and when you use Direct Messages, including the contents of the messages, the recipients, and date and time of messages.
They also collect Device and Location information.
When you create an account on etsy you need to provide certain information to make a purchase and use their service, such as a valid email, your name, billing info and address. When creating an account you might also provide things like your birthday, or gender. From Etsy on what they collect:
Automated Information: Etsy automatically receives and records information from your browser or your mobile device when you visit the Site, use the Apps, or use certain features of the Services, such as your IP address or unique device identifier, cookies, and data about which pages you visit and how you interact with those pages in order to allow us to operate and provide the Services.
Data from Advertising and Marketing Partners: As described below, Etsy receives information from our advertising and marketing partners about you. This information can include attribution information via cookies and UTM tags in URLs to determine where a visit to Etsy comes from, responses to marketing emails and advertisements, responses to offers, and audience information from partners who you have given consent to share that information with us.
Again, Location info is also collected by Etsy. Etsy says it’s both for advertising and analytics.
Google wrote their privacy policy from the view of having and being logged into a Google account to access their services like gmail or youtube. Unfortunately I could not find search - specific privacy policy, but they do assert they collect the terms you search:
We collect information to provide better services to all our users — from figuring out basic stuff like which language you speak, to more complex things like which ads you’ll find most useful, the people who matter most to you online, or which YouTube videos you might like. The information Google collects, and how that information is used, depends on how you use our services and how you manage your privacy controls.
When you’re not signed in to a Google Account, we store the information we collect with unique identifiers tied to the browser, application, or device you’re using. This allows us to do things like maintain your preferences across browsing sessions, such as your preferred language or whether to show you more relevant search results or ads based on your activity.
We collect information about your activity in our services, which we use to do things like recommend a YouTube video you might like. The activity information we collect may include:
- Terms you search for
- Videos you watch
- Views and interactions with content and ads
- Voice and audio information
- Purchase activity
- People with whom you communicate or share content
- Activity on third-party sites and apps that use our services
- Chrome browsing history you’ve synced with your Google Account
There you have it, a privacy policy example of one of each: social media advertising, behavioral advertising and search engine advertising.
There are some misconceptions about the “how”. Companies cannot listen to you through your phone and then give you an ad for the thing you verbally said (The government is a different story, but I’ll save that for another time.) Nonetheless, it feels this invasive when a targeted ad is shown.
Let’s go over an example and breakdown each step. Pretend you are shopping for a reusable water bottle.
You go to a retail website like Walmart.com or Amazon.com and a cookie is created associated with your computer. This includes you, your personal data and your location.
When you visit an article the next day (regardless if you purchased something or not) the article’s website reads your cookie data. Then you start to get ads related to the cookie, say, fitness equipment, or a water-soluble health drink.
This paired with your search engine history, social media likes and dislikes and more help ads become more and more targeted.
It is multi-platformed too, if different sites or apps are using the same ad provider, for ex, Google’s Ad sense. If you go on 5 different apps that all use the same ad provider you are likely to get ads from the same company, as the provider is drawing from the same pool of information each time.
Your internet browser, search engines and websites all store this information for as long as you let them, so be sure to clear your cookies and data when you need to. The downside to this is having to sign in manually, as the same data, like a saved user-name or password is also stored this way. Targeted ads that feel way too personal are the culmination of websites having a large amount of information on you. The right to be forgotten, or the right to internet privacy is something we should all care about especially given that Trump signed into law a measure that allows ISPs to sell your data without consent in April 2017.
In addition to the above, if you are on a social media site, your searches, data, and preferences can be used to draw up ads for your friends, or vice versa. If you have friends who are about the same age, or have some other similarity in data that an algorithm can make sense of, a targeted ad can be served. Companies are not listening to you, or reading your messages, but they are taking all of our combined information, piecing it together to serve ads that will make you cringe and feel watched.
Unfortunately the only way to 100% avoid the tracking is to go offline completely. In this digital age especially with the pandemic it is especially hard to do this. From companies that check your Facebook before hiring, to potential dates needing validation through Instagram that you are not a serial killer, going completely offline is not an option.
Use an ad blocker where you can
When I’m online on my laptop I have an adblocker on all the time. The only time I get targeted ads is when I’m on social media apps on my phone as discussed above. You can even find specific ad blockers for sites like youtube, and for your phone: work around apps that circumvent ads (ex: YoutubeVanced by XDA developers on Android). There are developers out there who also believe in the right to be forgotten, and the right to privacy, it just takes a little searching.
Use private browsing mode
All modern browsers have a private browsing mode which do not keep track of web history. If you are not going somewhere you’ll likely need to revisit, private browsing is an option. Social media info and search history can still be tracked but taking this step cannot hurt.
Clear your cookies on a schedule
As mentioned before clearing your cookies can really help, but is a hassle, to have to log in again on all your daily sites. But if you find you get targeted ads say 2-3 months after clearing your cookies, you now know it takes about 2-3 months before the algorithm has gained enough info about you to do its job, and that is your schedule. It will vary from person to person as how much information we share varies, which leads me to my next point…
Share less of your info online
Do you need to geo tag that post? Does the world absolutely need to know what brand those shoes are? This tip is a little give and take. If you know anything about running social media accounts for the purpose of growth, you know that geotagging, hashtagging and more are all very important to outreach. But on your personal accounts you don’t have to share this information unless you want to. Do so at your own risk.
Opt-out and lockdown where possible
You can say to ad companies you don’t want to be tracked here. Not all of them will honor it, but it doesn’t hurt to try.
On your social media sites you can limit the location data you share, and control specific ad settings. (I do so on Facebook and Instagram)
Invest in a VPN
Virtual Private Networks are used to hide your online identity, and create a protected network connection to the internet. It’s an added step that can protect from third parties tracking your online activity and helps prevent others from stealing your data.
I am actually doing research for myself to choose one, but I know many people who use NordVPN, and in the past I’ve used a free version of Avast.
Thank you, and safe browsing to those who read this far💜
Here are some sources:
Why Targeted Ads are the most brutal owns by Vox
Is FB listening to me? by PHYS.org
Also for possible further reading, you may be interested in learning more about how companies use deceptive design.