Connecting to the Internet seems harmless, doesn’t it? A person turns on its computer, goes to the web, and safely browses its favorite pages, right? While the process is indeed very straightforward, the online security threats existing today paint a much darker picture than that. You can be a victim of data theft while opening and using your usual social media platforms, or your search engine.
By now, we are all familiarized with most of the risks of using the web: malware infections that could go from viruses, Trojans or worms to adware, spyware, or ransomware; hackers stealing your credit card information and social media accounts, and even censorship and governmental surveillance. However, the lack of awareness about data theft performed by Internet giants such as Google, Facebook, Apple, or Microsoft is astonishing.
Permissions, terms, and conditions
When signing up at a service offered by a tech company, search engine, website, app, or renowned enterprise present on the web, do you usually take time to read the conditions, terms, and permissions that the thing you are about to register to asks? In all fairness, a small percentage of users read the information before accepting, and it can cost them their online privacy.
However, you should know that these companies are interested in performing data theft and put their hands on your shared content online. They can track your phone’s gyroscope, scan your private messages, and sell your data to third-parties.
Data theft performed by online giants may not always be actually stolen, as we sometimes agree to share cookies, logs, and other elements that can undermine our privacy down the road.
Location tracking and its consequences
Online services such as Apple, Google, and Microsoft and pages like Twitter, Facebook or Instagram will ask your location at the sign-up process. The “excuse” is that they want to provide a more personalized, or customized, experience.
What happens is that you allow these apps, pages, and services to interact with your device’s GPS and location system, showing your IP address and other configurations to these companies.
Data sharing with affiliates
If your location and shared content online are being logged by Google, Microsoft, Amazon, eBay, WhatsApp, Reddit, Apple, or any other Internet giant, you may want to know that they will, most likely, share the information with their affiliates.
A perfect example of that is Tinder. The world’s most famous dating app collects your information to use it in their database and to share it with fellow matching sites such as Match.com, OkCupid, and others. Tinder states that they do it to improve user experience, as virtually every page says.
Your data is being sold to third-parties
User data being sold to third parties is the reason behind the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) appearance as a way to safeguard third-party cybersecurity in some locations. Most of the mentioned online giants in this piece sell people’s information around the web.
Sometimes, the consequences are felt at the privacy level, above anything else. For example, if Google obtained logs of your connection, the most likely scenario is that, for instance, if you visited 13 e-commerce sites looking for high heels in the last 24 hours, you will see related ads around the pages you enter.
Apple sells your data to information and credit processing entities, and Amazon does it for marketing reasons. Tinder gathers your gyroscope data, Facebook doesn’t really “delete” searches once you choose that option, LinkedIn goes through your private messages, and Google is the king of data logging, sharing, and selling. Everyone does it, and you should protect yourself if your privacy and security are at stake.
What does Google collect?
- Personal details: name, birthday, gender, country, email, phone number, credit card, profile photo
- Device information: model, OS, unique device identifiers, mobile network, phone number
- Log info: search queries, call metadata (Google Voice), IP address, device event info (browser, settings, timestamps, referral URL, language, crashes), Google account cookies
- Location: IP address, GPS location, and device sensors
- Local storage: browser web storage and application data caches
- Cookies: Used in Google Analytics and advertising services
- Your activities: search queries, Google Map activity, websites visited, videos watched (Youtube), ads clicked
- User-created content: Gmail emails and contacts, calendar events, uploaded photos and videos, Drive content
- Activity on sites you visit that partner with Google
What does Facebook collect?
- Your profile’s information
- Posts you create and share
- Message sent on Facebook Messenger
- Files uploaded: photos, their geotags and timestamps
- What you view, the frequency and duration
- Info that other users provide about you: your friends, groups, chats, and contact information they import from their devices
- Payment info: when you buy something on Facebook, make an in-app purchase, or donate, Facebook collects billing, shipping, credit card, and authorization details
- Device info: OS, hardware, settings, unique identifiers (IMEI numbers), file and software metadata, battery, signal strength, mobile operator, ISP, browser, language, time zone, phone number
- Location: based on GPS, cell towers, wifi networks, and IP address
- Information from third-party sites when you Like or Share something, and when you log in using your Facebook account
- Info from third-party partners: jointly-offered services and advertisers
- Cookies track your activity on other sites
Other online giants such as Apple, Microsoft, Reddit, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, WhatsApp, Snapchat, Amazon, eBay, Netflix, and Hulu are known to perform or have performed, data theft and related activities.
Do you want a solution? Acquire the services of a VPN
You have seen thanks to the Google and Facebook examples how invasive these sites are. They don’t care about your privacy, but if you do, hiring the services of a Virtual Private Network is a good idea.
VPNs, as they are called, are encryption technologies that can hide and reroute your shared traffic and IP address to remote servers away from the data collecting hands of Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, and other companies.
VPN technology can hide your IP address and lend you a new one for temporary use. That way, you can spoof your location and mask your activity from online giants trying to perform data theft and share your activity logs with unknown third parties.
TorGuard is by far the best option for privacy and anonymous browsing since it protects your content with robust, military-grade encryption and has a sound no logging policy. It’s also the cheapest VPN with code “Best10VPN” which makes TorGuard only $30 for an entire year (or $5 a month). TorGuard will also safeguard your IP address through leak protection capabilities and has more than 3,000 servers available for users, in 55 nations.
In conclusion, data theft should not be taken for granted, even if you are using your regular sites and social media outlets. Privacy is a serious issue in the online landscape these days, and any breaches can lead to other unwanted situations.
