Ride the Lightning

Everyone’s Watching You Online: How to Fight Back

November 26, 2019

Before you do your Black Friday or Cyber Monday shopping, think about how intensively you are being monitored.

The New York Times published a great article on November 24 about this phenomenon.

As the author notes, he found out to his dismay that Google was sharing his creditworthiness with third parties. If you want Target to stop sharing your information with marketers, you have to call them. If you would like Hearst, the publishing giant, to stop sharing your physical mailing address with third parties, you have to mail a physical letter with your request to the company's lawyers.

Terrific, huh?

As consumers, we all have 'secret scores': hidden ratings that determine how long each of us waits on hold when calling a business, whether we can return items at a store, and what type of service we receive. A low score sends you to the back of the line; high scores get you premium treatment. You can request your own secret dossier by emailing , though the company is backed up because of the "recent press coverage."

You may get a dossier that is 400 pages long, indicating that people know what you ordered for dinner three years ago at a specific restaurant or private Airbnb that you have sent to hosts.

We're being tracked everywhere online. Everyone has a story about an alarmingly specific ad appearing on Facebook, or a directly targeted Amazon promo following us around the internet. But as internet-connect devices become more prevalent in our everyday lives — smart TVs, smart speakers and smart refrigerators, for example — and as our reliance on smartphones increases, we're just creating so much more data than we used to, said Bennett Cyphers, a staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit digital rights organization that advocates for consumer online privacy.

"There are just more streams of data out there to be aggregated and tied to profiles and sold," Mr. Cyphers said. "Because people don't realize that their car is collecting data about their location and sending it off to some server somewhere, they're less likely to think about that, and companies are less likely to be held accountable for that kind of thing."

He added: "Information is being shared completely haphazardly, and there's no accountability at any stage, especially in America."

"The only people I've heard say, 'Who cares?' are people who don't understand the scope of the problem," Mr. Cyphers said.

"A lot of the tracking systems out there make it easier for law enforcement to gather data without warrants. A lot of trackers sell data directly to law enforcement and to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. I think the bottom line is that it's creepy at best. It enables manipulative advertising and political messaging in ways that make it a lot easier for the messengers to be unaccountable. It enables discriminatory advertising without a lot of accountability, and in the worst cases it can put real people in real danger."

Still, there are signs that things could be improving, if slowly. The Cambridge Analytica scandal, Mr. Cyphers said, "dredged up the worst parts of the industry into the press and popular knowledge," which in some ways forced companies and lawmakers to acknowledge the issue. Sweeping changes, such as the California Consumer Privacy Act and Europe's GDPR, have led the way in giving internet users new rights and protections, and Mr. Cyphers said that "popular awareness and the techlash has opened up room for real regulation."

"As long as you can make a buck and what you're doing isn't illegal," Mr. Cyphers said "someone's going to do it."

What can you do?

First, don't hand over data unless you have to. Don't share your contacts. Don't give any information that they don't need.

One of the best resources for opting out of advertiser tracking is the website simpleoptout.com which provides links to the opt-out pages for some of the most popular destinations online — places that are definitely tracking you as you read this.

Some of the major ones you should opt out of right now include:

• OptOutPrescreen.com
• PayPal
• Spokeo
• Visa
• Lexis-Nexis
• WhitePages.com
• Apple
• Yahoo
• Amazon
• Microsoft
• Verizon
• AT&T
• Chase
• YouTube
• Comcast Xfinity
• Google (This one will take a while, it's a labyrinth of menus and settings.)
• Bank of America

Additionally, do a checkup of how social media sites are using your data – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Reddit.

There are also extensions you can install to your web browser to prevent some online tracking. The EFF has built two tools you should install — Privacy Badger and HTTPS Everywhere — and also recommends the extension uBlock Origin. The EFF also has this guide to Surveillance Self-Defense, which has an extensive library of guides to protecting yourself online. Your smartphone is a whole other game, but there are a few basic things everyone should do. This guide from USA Today is a perfect place to start, whether you have an iPhone or Android device.

Yes, it is a lot of work. But if you care about your privacy, know that privacy requires a significant investment of time. And it would be nice if Congress gave a damn and passed meaningful privacy laws!

Hat tip to Dave Ries.

Sharon D. Nelson, Esq., President, Sensei Enterprises, Inc.
3975 University Drive, Suite 225|Fairfax, VA 22030
Email: Phone: 703-359-0700
Digital Forensics/Cybersecurity/Information Technology
https://senseient.com
https://twitter.com/sharonnelsonesq
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sharondnelson
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