Technology

Do you follow me online?

The right people at the right time:

This is the most common sales slogan for advertising companies. This is commonly called targeted advertising. Advertisers can choose the demographic of advertisers they want to sell their products to. Even beyond apps like Facebook, where people voluntarily share information like relationship status and Likes, there are other companies that collect similar data based on user activities online.

Through the hundreds of web pages you visit every day, you are leaving a trail of information that advertising companies can track. All of these websites can provide all the free services that they provide, just because they can offset the costs through advertising. Therefore, the success of websites comes from generating traffic through their websites. Success for advertisers comes from providing the most relevant ads to each user so that they end up clicking on the ads and possibly paying money for the products or services they are selling. The data that ad agencies track is not something you can erase by closing your browser or even restarting your machine.

Web cookies:

According to wikipedia: a cookie is used for a source website to send status information to a user’s browser and for the browser to return status information to the source site. Status information can be anything that is actually stored on your computer. So should you permanently disable cookies? It is generally good to allow cookies on your computer in order to enjoy the full benefits of a website. For example, when you are shopping at Amazon.com and you have added some items to your shopping cart, you must have cookies enabled so that you can come back the next day and continue shopping from where you left off. So it is a very good thing in terms of convenience.

Advertising companies use the same technique to store cookies on your computer and track your online activities. This page (http://www.networkadvertising.org/managing/opt_out.asp) lists the cookies for the advertising platforms currently running on your computer. If you look closely, the ads placed by one of these companies will be the most relevant to your recent online activity.

How to protect myself:

Although most advertising companies are not malicious and do not profit from the sale of your personal information, it is good to be aware of what is happening so close to you. There is certain information that you will never want to share with anyone, such as perhaps your medical situation. To obtain such information, you must know how to protect yourself from inadvertently disclosing it to online businesses. Here are some tips:

  • Delete your cookies from time to time. There is a lot of help online on how to do it.
  • Beware of malicious sites. Remember that they can also place cookies on your computer.
  • When entering secure data such as bank details or passwords, make sure the page is encrypted by HTTPS. You will also get a lot of help if you search online on this topic.
  • From time to time, watch for cookies on your computer to make sure someone else using that computer doesn’t go to malicious sites.

There are online security organizations and security enthusiasts who check on advertising companies if they try to step out of line. It is good to know about some of these organizations:

  • EPIC.org
  • Networkadvertising.org
  • Worldprivacyforum.org

Online medical information:

Special care should be taken when looking for medical answers online. Search engines generally store the IP addresses of their users so that they can trace a particular search query to an individual quite easily. When conducting medical searches, try to use websites that do not store information that can be used to identify you. Try to find services that do not store any information that is used to trace a search query to you to protect the privacy of your medical information.

Conclusion:

Prevention is better than cure. The internet is still evolving and we don’t know what it will be like tomorrow. It is better to protect confidential data and continue to enjoy all the benefits of the Internet.

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