Are We Being Watched?

Are we being watched online? Of course we all know the answer is yes, but not many know exactly how we are being watched. For example, many believe that Facebook/Instagram directly record them through their microphone, which is why they often see ads about things they were just talking about. However, this isn’t true. The real truth is much scarier. Facebook not only records your every movement on the site, but they supplement it with purchasable data about you from other companies. That means that there’s a whole bank of information collected about you that you didn’t know about, and is being distributed by people you’ve probably never heard of. One example of a company that sells your data would be Equifax-a major credit bureau. A credit bureau would obviously have all kinds of information about its users-for example, “have files that include things like your income, your marital status, your legal history, ‘the square footage of your house within 25 square feet,’ and so on. These data brokers also manage the majority of loyalty programs in grocery stores and major pharmacy chains, which means they don’t need you to pay for things with a credit card in order to know what you’re buying” (Vox). Facebook usually uses this information to target specific ads at people who they think, based on the data they collect, will show something they are interested in. Facebook can also collect data from non-users, usually by gathering contact information users give when they use the “share with contacts” feature of the app. From this data, they’ll determine the best way to advertise Facebook to the person to get them to make an account.

While I do think the idea of basically all my data being stored by a company I have never downloaded/used anything from is pretty unsettling, in the grand scheme of things I don’t think it really makes much of a difference for me. It’s not like Facebook will release my data to everyone I know or anything like that. There have been incidents where companies holding lots of data about people have been breached and have had the information stolen (ex. Equifax had an incident where 143 million profiles were open to a hacker), but even in that case I’m one out of millions of profiles the thief has access to, and there’s no chance they’d choose me over someone like a celebrity. So I think that the people who can only really be affected by having their data stored by companies are more famous/powerful people, while for everyone else the worst that will probably happen is being shown an ad they don’t like. While it is extremely unlikely that anything will happen to either person, I still believe that it is unfair for the person to have to worry at all about their safety/privacy because a company has been collecting data behind their back. The worst way I have heard this data be used was in the 2016 election, when the company Cambridge Analytica, hired by the Trump campaign, got access to 50 million Facebook users’ data and used liking patterns on the site to predict the users’ voting habits so that they could configure a way to expose users to the right propaganda to persuade them to vote for Trump. While there is no way to measure how much of an affect this had in the election, it’s more than possible that it could’ve been a factor in Trumps election. While this could definitely make some people feel more than unsettled, I still don’t think that it’s that concerning as I’d at least imagine that for people with a certain political view, it would be very unlikely that this actually changed their mind about who to vote for. So, from what I have read so far, I don’t think that it’s likely that having companies store your data will ruin your life or anything of that magnitude. What seems to be the worst case scenario (in practically all cases) would be being shown subliminal messages that could change your mind and make you do something you wouldn’t have done otherwise (such as vote for a certain candidate or buy something).

Since I’m not that well informed exactly how companies collect and use data, I’m not sure if there’s another side to the story that explains how it is beneficial for people to have their data stored by companies or if the risks posed by the practice is so small it’s negligible, or anything else of that nature-therefore, I can’t be certain that this practice is entirely bad. What I can say with confidence is that people should be better informed on this practice, they should know how companies track them and why, what they do with the data, etc. I don’t think many people know very well about data collection, and I don’t blame them as it is pretty intricate-however reading just a few articles is a good start (such as the three I linked). Now I feel a little less worried when using social media as I know my phone isn’t recording everything I’m saying–however I also now know that much more information about me is being held by people I don’t know.