Now that we know about how and why we're being tracked on the internet, where can we turn for updated information?

 

Transcript

Davis: David, thank you so much for joining us for the series of episodes on how and why ads follow us around the internet. It’s been so great to talk to you. You mentioned several tools and techniques over the past few episodes and I’m wondering if we could get a quick review. Can you just quickly list for us the tools that folks who are interested in particular privacy should prioritize?

David: For mitigating ad tracking, Privacy Badger is great for your computer’s web browser, and mobile browsers like Brave and DuckDuckGo help do the same thing when browsing on your smartphone.

Speaking of smartphones, location data can be particularly sensitive, so turning off precise location data for apps you don’t want to share that with is something you can do on both iOS and Android phones now. Ad tracking from search engines can also be mitigated by turning ad personalization off, or just using a search engine that doesn’t personalize ads.

For mitigating ad tracking, Privacy Badger is great for your computer’s web browser, and mobile browsers like Brave and DuckDuckGo help do the same thing when browsing on your smartphone.

The scariest form of data collection, in my opinion, is data brokers, but luckily you can opt out of them with a service like a Albine’s DeleteMe, or just opt out of each data broker one at a time.

Davis: So we mentioned across the series that privacy and technology generally is sort of a moving target. It’s always changing. We know now that Apple is creating new anti-tracking measures. Google is about to follow. So maybe we can talk more about how and where library workers can tune in for more information about how to help themselves,
as well as their patrons with questions about these topics? What further reading might you recommend?

David: I would recommend checking out the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Cover Your Tracks website, which helps you explore some of the different ways ads are able to identify you as you browse the web. I would also recommend checking out Consumer Reports’ Security Planner as well.

Davis: Gotcha, and again we’ll have the links below. I would also recommend staying tuned into privacy issues on your standard media sites like New York Times, Washington Post. Those sources are are now keeping pretty good track of technology and all the things that are changing in this world, so, yeah, that’s my recommendation. and David, again, thank you so much, it’s been really great to talk to you.

What’s next for you in terms of your work helping folks understand their data privacy and make different choices? And also where can we go to learn more about you and your work?

David: Well a lot of my work is in helping protect one’s privacy is geared towards journalists and media makers but it turns out a lot of the same advice works pretty well for others too. Our digital security team over at Freedom of the Press Foundation has a collection of written guides on different topics relating to online privacy and security and we’ll share a link below on that.

Ad tracking from search engines can also be mitigated by turning ad personalization off, or just using a search engine that doesn’t personalize ads.

Davis: Great, thank you so much. I’m so glad to hear that you’re doing all that great work for people who really need it Before we say goodbye for the last time in this series, do you have any last words of advice?

David: Yeah. I think that although a lot of the internet may seem really scary and privacy online may seem impossible, I want to assure you it’s not. People are able to use the web while protecting their privacy online all the time. The more you learn about how things online work the more you understand how to manage risks around that and eventually it becomes second nature.

Davis: Before I too say goodbye until series three, I’d like to thank my wonderful project partners at Brooklyn Public Library, The New York Public Library and Queens Public Library. That’s in alphabetical order, as always. This project is funded by the Mayor’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer. Thank you all so much and I’ll catch you again in series 3.

We've already given up a LOT of personal data, just by using the web. Who wants it, and what can we do wrest it back under our own control?

 

Transcript

Davis: Let’s talk for a bit about what to do now that so many of us have been tracked around the web for the better part of the last 20 years. David, welcome. There’s already so much information about us available online. To what extent is all this data we generate combined with information from other sources? I’m thinking about financial institutions, government agencies, and other entities that collect our data.

David: Well, unfortunately in the U.S., we have a particularly spooky data broker industry in which data broker companies go to places that do in fact package up your data and slap a price tag on it And they buy more of it from more places repackage that and then sell it.

Data brokers specialize in collecting particularly sensitive data.

These kind of services exist for things like performing informal background checks for example but unfortunately can be used for online harassment and abuse.

Davis: Can you say more about that? What do you mean by online harassment and abuse?

David: Data brokers specialize in collecting particularly sensitive data. Things like your phone number, home address, birthday, lists of possible family members and their phone numbers and addresses, and so on. And online harassers can buy access to that kind of data and post it publicly online as an intimidation tactic. This is called doxing and can lead to lots of strangers calling you or in some cases sending unwanted pizza delivery or S.W.A.T. team to your home.

Davis: Yeah, it’s a one thing to have pizza delivered to you but quite another to have a S.W.A.T. team arrive particularly like in the middle of the night or something. So, yeah, that’s a dark side of the data industry for sure.

What if anything at all can be done about the data that’s already out there? How can we stem the tide of all this this information floating around about us?

David: For data brokers, most of them have a means of opting out and services like Abine’s DeleteMe, for example, let you pay for someone to opt out of most of the data brokers out there for you. My friend Yael Grauer also has a list of data brokers and instructions on how to opt out from each, which we’ll include below as well.

Davis: To what extent do data brokers take in and sell information about our offline activity? Say, does the data online get matched up with our credit card information or anything like that?

Refusing data-collecting discount programs and using cash helps reduce the amount of data being collected about you.

David: Sort of. It really depends on the credit card’s privacy policies as well as the policies of the merchant you’re using the card with and even the, you know, separate policy of the cash register that they’re using and that data can end up being sold and end up in the hands of data brokers in some cases. Many of the discount programs like those you get asked to sign up for at stores where you, you know, you scan a barcode and you get a discount. Those end up selling some of your personal data usually as part of the deal.

If the cash register has ever asked you to enter in your birthday, that’s unfortunately likely because that bit of data is also for sale. Refusing these data collecting discount programs and using cash helps reduce the amount of data being collected about you a lot though.

Davis: Right, that’s actually why I give different birthdays for different services. So Facebook now wishes me a happy birthday on January 1st even though my birthday’s in October. I like throwing them off their trail with that whole thing. So, back to the online world. I know I for one see a lot of very highly targeted ads on places like Facebook and Instagram. Speaking of, can we ask sites like this to forget what they know about us?

David: Yeah, since Meta, Facebook’s parent company, runs its own ad network, the targeted ads you see on Facebook and Instagram can be less targeted by going to your Facebook settings, basically. If you go to your Facebook information, you can look at your off-Facebook activity and then clear it from there this will vastly minimize the ability to target ads at you within Facebook. and Facebook’s properties but ultimately Facebook’s main goal is to know everything about you. So there’s always going to be some data they will collect about you unless you delete your Facebook account entirely.

Facebook’s main goal is to know everything about you. So there’s always going to be some data they will collect about you unless you delete your Facebook account entirely.

Davis: How much good does it do to clear history on your browsers?

David: Your browser has a list of websites you visited called your history. So this this list is kept on the computer you’re using that web browser on. So clearing your history clears it from the computer so that other people using that same computer can’t snoop on what websites you visited the websites and ads on those websites that you visited, however, create their own record of your visit on their end and it’s ultimately up to them to decide how long to keep those records around.

Davis: So, when using the library, for instance, it would be good to advise patrons to clear their browser history, if you don’t have software that does it for them already. What other tips would you like to share about curbing access to data that’s been collecting about us so far?

David: So Google, Facebook, and other major sites have settings that let you delete records of past activities on their websites and apps and I would look into that next. Both Google and Facebook own an outsized portion of the online ad markets within the U.S., so trimming the list of characteristics either platform has inferred from your online activities can actually go a really long way.

Davis: Great, thank you for all these tips. We’re going to talk in episode 5 about how to help library patrons and where library staff can go to learn more, so, David, thanks for being with us, and we’ll talk to you soon.

And if we're not super comfortable with having that level of creepiness in our lives? Here's what we can do to stop those ads in our tracks

 

Transcript

Davis: Hi again, David. Let’s chat about the tools and technology that we can use to stop ads from tracking us. I know there are different techniques we can employ across our various devices and services that we use and I wonder if we can start with what we can do to stop our browsers from tracking us?

David: So luckily a number of solutions are available for blocking some tracking in web browsers. Privacy Badger, for example, is a browser extension for Firefox and Chrome that blocks a lot of known ad tracking. Facebook also does a lot of its own tracking tied to your Facebook account and its data, and a browser extension called Facebook Container can help to keep Facebook out of your non-Facebook web visits. Browsers on smartphones don’t support browser extensions though, but some mobile browsers like Brave and DuckDuckGo‘s web browser for iOS and Android both help block a lot of ad tracking.

I recommend checking each app you have installed on your phone to see if you can turn location services off.

Davis: Thank you. I know you set a lot of different tools there so if you’re watching please know that you can scroll down on the web page for NYC Digital Safety and find a list of all these tools. So let’s talk about our phones. I know location data is a very big deal in the tech world. How can we stop our location data from being shared so much?

David: Both iOS and android have ways of selectively letting us choose whether apps have permission to our location and when. I recommend checking each app you have installed on your phone to see if you can turn location services off for it, or at least turn it off, you know, for when you’re not using the app. Some apps might not work without location services, but you’d actually be surprised to see how many actually still do

Davis: We know that social media uses our personal data to fund their services as well. We’ve talked about that a lot so far. What can we do about that?

David: Social media sites like Facebook use data to create very targeted options for ad placement buyers. Contrary to popular belief, it doesn’t sell your data in the way people think it does. It doesn’t package up a giant pile of information then slap a price tag on it. Instead it creates an incredibly targeted ad network that lets companies show their wares to segments of users that have similar likes, demographics, behavior patterns, and interests and as you. The more data they have on you, the more precise the ads are getting and the more they can charge for that ad.

Different search engines will offer different levels of control to mitigate ad tracking.

Davis: Yeah, and I think that’s a great point, and one that bears repeating, is that Facebook and other companies don’t actually sell your data to other people but they sell access to you through their services, so that’s what sort of makes the ad industry go on social media.

So let’s talk search engines. Those are another vector for collecting data that can be used for targeted ads. What can we do to limit the amount of data search engines see?

David: Different search engines will offer different levels of control to mitigate ad tracking. For Google specifically you can turn off most of its ad tracking personalization in the ad settings page and you can also see kind of the categories of interests and other things that it’s inferred about you on the same page. Other search engines like DuckDuckGo and Startpage just don’t do ad tracking at all so there’s nothing to switch off there.

Davis: Thank you for all these tips. In our next video we’ll cover what to do with all the data that’s already out there. It’s been since the 90s that all this information has been available about us online so episode four will cover what do we do if our information is already out. So thanks so much, David, and I’ll see you in the next video.