5 Alarming Things You Probably Don’t Know About Online Tracking
5 Alarming Things You Probably Don’t Know About Online Tracking
Websites, apps, and ISPs – they all seem to want to track you. Should you worry? Are their web cookies and beacons really harmful?
Online tracking is nothing new, but the rise of social networks and mobile devices has taken it to a new level. Even the most seemingly harmless online trackers can have a much more serious impact on your privacy and security than you might expect.
While using cookies online can improve your browsing experience, it’s important to fully understand all the implications of online tracking.
1. Your ISP Can Track Everything You Do Online
Your ISP has a full log of your online activity, including all the websites you browse. Using a web browser with an anonymous or incognito mode doesn’t help. Your ISP can still see what sites you visit and when.
While your ISP probably has better things to do than pay a team to monitor your online activity, it can still record everything you do on the web. ISPs may not use your browsing log for their own ends, except perhaps for some marketing now and then – or provide more expensive, “anonymous” internet plans.
But there is the risk that the data your ISP has on you will end up in the hands of a third-party. ISPs have been known to sell their customers’ activity logs to marketers and other companies.
The bottom line is this – conventional defense strategies like private browsers won’t prevent your ISP from compiling a log of your browsing history which you cannot access or delete.
2. Almost All Sites You Visit Track You
Most sites feed your browser cookies. In return, your browser remembers your activity on that site. This includes login information and more. Web cookies are useful because they save you time – without them, you’d have to enter the same login details every time you visit a site.
Websites use more than cookies – they use browser fingerprinting to collect comprehensive information about your web browser, including language, time zone, and plugins, all of which can tell a lot about you. They also use web beacons, tiny invisible objects that track your clicks and interactions with ads and more.
The sheer amount of data that websites can track about you is simply alarming. Putting all that data together, they can generate a very accurate user profile – the perfect target for ads.
3. It Involves Third-Party Tracking, Which Is Creepy
Let’s say you visit a major news site to check the latest headlines. It’s a big name in the news industry and you don’t have to enter any billing information. You only have to create a simple user profile to be able to comment and customize your user experience. If the site asks for a cookie you don’t mind. After all, why should you?
So far so good, but sites may embed third party trackers which have nothing to do with the website experience itself. These are usually marketing or ad-related. They track your interaction with ads, calls to action, and so on. This data may then be sold or passed on to other third-parties which can use it for their own ends.
4. Personal Data Can Be Collected Secretly
Online privacy laws are stricter in some countries than in others. While in Europe data tracking laws force companies to be more or less transparent with customers, a website incorporated in the British Virgin Islands can track you without having to explicitly state what exactly they track – or that they track you at all.
What further complicates matters is that the same data that needs to be tracked, say for usability improvements, can be used for other purposes. Websites can get away with tracking your location, web browser, login times, or the device you are using under the excuse that they use this data to improve the user experience.
The fact is that you can’t know how much data websites collect on you. That’s something that website owners decide. Technically, it can be everything you do on a website.
5. Collected Data Can Be Used Against You
Imagine that you want to apply for a small personal loan online. You provide the information required and start packing your bags knowing that you have a good credit score. But the next day you get an email that informs you that your loan application has been denied.
This can be one of the negative effects of online tracking. It won’t sound as far-fetched when you recall that ISPs and websites can track just about everything you do online and sell this data to third parties. Data like your income, spending habits, or debt gathered from other sites can end up in the wrong hands and trigger false alarms.
Final Thought
Online tracking is insidious. Because websites and other online data trackers don’t have to be transparent, more of your data than you suspect could be tracked. That’s why it’s important to take a proactive approach to protect your data online.
The simple solution to the complex problem of online tracking is a Privacy Guardian like the one provided by the complete security solution System Mechanic Ultimate Defense. Combining this with a VPN can help you mitigate the risks of online tracking and browse the web safely without giving up your favorite sites or networks.
