If you think that by the fact that only you use your own devices you are maintaining your privacy, you are wrong. Our personal data is at the mercy of various organizations. Unfortunately, several of them are dedicated to making a profit knowing everything about us. This guide will explain what you should know and do to protect your data, and maintain a certain privacy.
One of the most attractive aspects of connecting to the Internet is free . We love accessing free apps and services, free trials, giveaways, and a few other things. What we often do not realize is the ease with which we give our personal data. Above all, our names, surnames, email addresses, where we live, what company we work for and much more. All these data that we provide are very useful for the different organizations that manage them.
The terms of service, privacy and other aspects are not read by practically anyone. We avoid doing this practice for reasons of time or simply because we want everything for now! It is not like this? The direct consequence of this is that we authorize organizations to do what they want with our data, including selling it to other organizations, of which several of them generate profits by taking your data, and in turn, is responsible for sell them to many others. Without realizing it, many people already have knowledge about us and can put together our complete profile, they may even have knowledge of our preferences, likes, where we go frequently and much more.
What are Data Brokers?
Data Brokers are the most benefited from the database business on the Internet, as we have previously commented, these companies access your personal data, create a profile of each person and then sell them again to other organizations. Interesting, don’t you think? Data Brokers are much bigger organizations than we think, they are part of a big industry, quite lucrative and most importantly, almost nobody knows them. This benefits them even more because they almost never go through the scrutiny or that people take the time to investigate regarding this type of organization, despite the fact that there have been complaints, reports and all the information that puts them in evidence. Even the US Senate itself has denounced some Data Brokers a few years ago.
Some organizations mask this situation with the fact that access to personal data is given in order to give a better experience to people in general. We are sure that, to some extent, we are aware of the fact that we are exposing ourselves when providing our personal data. And not only that, everything we do in applications such as Facebook, Instagram and others, is registered so that it can be processed and we have a much more personalized experience of use.
Thus, we receive recommendations that many times fit 100% in relation to what we were looking for previously in Google or, in relation to the profile of a business that is on Instagram. There is no doubt that digital services are providing us with the best possible experience, in exchange for exposing our personal data. And that better experience makes us forget about the fact that we are at risk at all times: many people outside of us know everything about us.
How to avoid sharing our personal data
The browser is one of the programs that we use most frequently on a daily basis. This can be an inexhaustible source of browsing data that is useful to the various organizations that collect your data for a variety of purposes. Consequently, we can have an extension called uBlock Origin , which is compatible with Chrome, Chromium, Safari, Microsoft Edge and Firefox browsers (including the Android version).
One of the main distinctions of this extension is that it has a wide variety of configuration options to adapt it according to our needs. uBlock Origin is basically a program that blocks ads, trackers and any site that could contain malware. One of the elements of web browsing that can reveal the most about us are cookies , these are used to collect information about you, your tastes, interests and your behavior on the web in general.
It is possible that the announcements that we see every day, are of our utility. However, there comes a time when we can’t even access the content we originally searched for because we are invaded by ads. There are websites with “free” content that have more ads than the content in question. Why? Because, after all, this is a source of income.
The screenshot above shows us what uBlock Origin is like. It has a button to enable or disable locks on the current page, and these preferences are applied by website and not generally. It is possible to view the detail of all the domains to which our data is directed, in addition to the site where we originally browsed.
There are 5 quick access buttons, which allow you to quickly enable and disable the following features:
- Pop-up blocking
- Blocking multimedia elements
- Enable / disable cosmetic lock
- Blocking remote sources
- Enable / Disable JavaScript
In the configuration section, you have access to all the filter lists that are integrated into the extension. You can enable, disable, and most importantly, update them so you’re constantly protected. It is also possible to create your own filters , rules and you can add or remove domains from certain websites to the white list . Whitelisting means that those website domains can display ads, host cookies, and if programmed in a certain way, access your data.
Having control over who we share our personal data with is a valuable tool for users. It is highly recommended to know about it, since our privacy will be increasingly at risk if we do not take the appropriate measures.
