Be careful of what you share on Facebook, Google & Internet

Data privacy is important & critical for our own security & safety. We tell our kids, not to talk to strangers & not to share family details with unknown people but what about the data you are 'willingly but unknowingly' sharing on the internet everyday? Let me tell you about a real life incident. Few years back one American company mailed baby product catalog to a couple and they were surprised because they had recently planned to have a baby but the wife was not pregnant. The net savvy couple did some research and found out that the shops and website were selling their credit-card purchase history to marketeers and from the history marketeers were able to predict that the couple were planning to have a baby and sent the baby product catalogs even before the lady was pregnant!  
                                        You think it is impossible? I can prove it to you that it is very easy to predict such things using Data Analytics if you have a persons credit history, in other words 'Person's Personal Spend Data'. How could a company share/sell your credit card history with some other company? Well when you took the credit-card you never told the company to not use your purchase history for future marketing (Did you even ask them what they do with your data?) so if you decide to sue the company then it will be a long court fight & few people have sued companies for breach of privacy (or what ever legal term is used now) and managed to get compensated for misuse of complete or partial personal data.

Have you ever wondered why websites start displaying ads about a product that you have viewed on Facebook or a product relevant to a post that you recently viewed on Facebook? For example I viewed 'Eurovigil Eureka Forbes Page' on Facebook and within seconds when I went to IRCTC website it showed me Eurovigil ads (I disable cookies on my laptop so it was not because of cookie tracking!)  One of my friend who is not from software industry was excited that the websites were getting smarter and showing relevant ads! But how does a website get smarter? No magic here, the smartness comes from your personal information/data that you willingly share/upload or worse, data that is getting tracked without your knowledge. To give you a smart personal advice, why does a website have to know about you personal data - Age, M/F, City, Single/Married. Kids, Kids age, your company name, buying pattern, dressing style, electronics you use, financial status, do you use a 95K IPhone or are you a cheapo who uses 1.5k phone?  No offense, but that's how marketeers profile us and then sell the information to other marketeers. So if the website smartly suggests a product or service then you should know it has access to some information you directly/indirectly shared somewhere on the internet or else your credit card provider has shared with some company. Those of you who are not from IT would be surprised to know that new age companies keep a watch our your social-media post and use this data to understand customer sentiments, this science is called Sentiment Analytics & Predictive Analytics.  Let me tell you that not all companies use this data to spy on you, some companies use this data to prevent crime. For example Credit card companies 'ALSO' use huge computers to collect social media posts  (Facebook, Google, Twitter..) to prevent fraud, telecom companies use this data to prevent SIM fraud and also to decide costing of their mobile plans but the point is 'companies are all reading your posts every day and they perhaps know more about you than your close friends!

Software companies internationally have been fined billions of dollars for collecting, storing and misuse of personal data of users without taking users consent. Facebook, Google and other companies can afford to run lakhs of servers and thousands of employee to manage the server across the world & still not charge you a penny because they earn much more by SELLING PERSONAL DETAILS OF USERS. FB account holders like me who are aware usually provided minimal information on my Facebook account & in spite of the precaution FB is still profiling me from every FB post I read, every ad I click on FB, every comment I make on FB and then Facebook is tracking what you do. Facebook is .....(even Google does it)

1. Storing the data ( because we gave FB permission to store data when we created an account and accepted the agreement without reading it) Tomorrow if you want to wipe of your personal data from FB you would be able to delete your account but you will never be able to remove the personal data which is already part of FB database and the persona data that FB shared with other marketeers.
2. FB is using your data to create a virtual profile of you
3. Using your data to push relevant ads to you
4. Sharing/selling the virtual profile data to other websites (that's how IRCTC website's 'Advertisement Service' knows I am interested in Eurovigil)
5. FB and similar websites know about you, though your post and friends they know 'names of each of your relatives and even have photos of your relatives and friends'
6. Data is everything. We can create a virtual person, apply for credit cards and open bank account online without visiting the bank if we have the personal data of a person.

We are caught in the 'Internet Of Things Data Mess' and marketeers & companies that sell personal data are the big winners. As long as you use internet someone will soon get you personal details and your activities ( that's right not just Facebook & Google almost all websites collect personal data including location data). Your husband or wife may not know that you ordered the grocery while you were enjoying Cafe Latte at Coffee Day but "The Internet Companies Know It & Will Use The Information"  and there goes your right to privacy. What you can do is be careful while registering on website and using social media and not volunteer personal details that you feel should not be made public. For you to enjoy social media or get discounts from website you don't have to share details like whether you are single/married, who are your relations, your detailed address, your  company name etc. These details could be sold to some company and then to another company & so on till every marketeer knows about you.

How facebook collects data about users & non-users:

Facebook collects data from non-registered users in two main ways: From their browsing history and from their friends. 

1. Websites that use Facebook’s advertising pixel (Like/Share button) – send data about those site visits back to Facebook (browsing history, IP…).
2. “If those Like/Share buttons are on the page, regardless of whether you touch them or not, Facebook is collecting data,”
3. So 'if you’re logged into Facebook with the same browser you use to surf the web, the company knows exactly who you are and the vast majority of the websites you visit' if you’re not logged in, the company can still associate the data with your IP address and all the websites you’ve been to that contain Facebook code.
4. The other main way Facebook gets info: its contact upload feature => To link different accounts having same contact email or phone numbers. I would never advice you to share your primary email or phone number with Facebook or social websites.

Facebook track your location when you’re using its apps. Even without access to your accurate location data from the smartphone, Facebook uses information from your browsing habits, including IP address, Wi-Fi network, and Bluetooth to pinpoint your whereabouts and place relevant ads inside its apps. Facebook uses city and zip level location which Facebook collects from IP addresses and other information such as check-ins and current city from user profile. ( I always disable my location on my mobile phone - no one has any business to know my location!)

Solution to avoid/reduce tracking:

There are some tricks, too avoid getting tracked by internet service providers: 

1. Using different email addresses for different services, and even different browsers, can help enhance your privacy, according to privacy experts we consulted. You can use primary email address for communication & create a 2nd email address (provide minimal or psuedo personal details) to register for various sites
2. Using privacy browsers: Tor, Brave etc
3. Using script blocking:  by using browser addon like Ublock origin, NoScript, PrivacyBadger

So if you are meeting someone handsome/pretty without your other half knowing about it don't use credit card to pay the bill & switch off both your cells to avoid location tracking or else 'The Boss' will find it out!