Do you know that you are being tracked most of the time you are online? Every click, every web page you visit, the social media shares, posts, and likes, and even your search history are being used to create one giant profile about yourself. If you’re like me, that makes you want to use a burner phone and some weird IP scrambler tool.
But enough about me. The easiest way to determine if you are being tracked is by examining the ads you see when visiting websites. I’m sure you have had one of those moments when you notice an ad about a travel destination only a few hours after you talked about that destination with your friend.
No, Facebook and Google aren’t listening in to your conversations. They’re doing something more comprehensive than that: predicting your behavior based on your past online activities. That ad is shown because you showed tendencies of wanting to visit that destination in the past.
As scary as it may seem, online tracking is made possible by your own digital footprint, and that digital footprint can be traced all the way back to the IP address you use. How much does the internet – and tech companies – know about you?
How You Are Tracked
Before we discuss how you can make it more difficult to track your online activities, we must first understand how you are being tracked in the first place. As mentioned before, Facebook, Google, and other tech giants aren’t listening in to your conversations. They are gathering information from the online activity you do instead.
When you access a website – let’s say your Facebook account – your IP address gets logged by the server. That IP address alone contains a lot of information that can be traced back to who you are, including information about your device and your web browser.
Moving to another site means being followed by the same trackers. Facebook Pixel and other tracking technologies – including Google Analytics – are gathering information about your movement and activities online long after you left the first site you visited. They also gather information about your purchases and search queries.
The result of this kind of online tracking is a truly comprehensive profile of who you are as an internet user. If you think the ads you see today are uncanny, wait until you are exposed to some of the more advanced tracking algorithms currently being deployed. You’ll start seeing ads for home supplies right before you run out of them.
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Browser Cookies Removed!
There are a lot of ways you can limit how you are tracked online, but the first and easiest way to go is by limiting browser cookies and their access to your personal information. Complete anonymity is not easy to get when you spend most of your time online – and you use web services like social media – but clearing browser cookies is a good start.
Cookies store a lot of information about your activities and the pages you have visited. When you clear your cookies, trackers need to start the process from the beginning. This makes compiling a comprehensive profile of yourself a bit more difficult to do.
At the same time, deleting browser cookies come with some added benefits. When you are searching for deals on flights and hotel rooms, for instance, using a fresh browser allows you to get better prices in general. There is no bias added to the prices you see on travel sites and you can even qualify for more discounts along the way.
Adding More Digital Noise
Another way you can limit how you are tracked online is by adding digital noise to cover your footprints. Fortunately, there are a lot of ways you can obscure your footprints online, starting with changing user agents by using simple browser extensions to fool trackers. Browsers like Chrome also have a Do Not Track feature that defaults to Off; make sure you turn this feature On.
Switching to a private browser helps too. Lightbeam, a browser built entirely for privacy, lets you track your trackers. You can see a diagram of how Facebook and other entities track you across the World Wide Web as well as information about trackers available on the site. Some ad blockers can help block unwanted trackers for better security.
Another way to mask your identity online is by using a proxy or a VPN to change your IP address. When combined with good cookie higiene and measures such as a stronger firewall and a browser extension for altering user agents, you can browse the internet without really having to worry about trackers ever again.
