How to Reduce Your Digital Footprint

This is your daily 5 min read of Nosy Eye. It’s also your daily reminder to change your password…before your 12 year old neighbor finds it and reminds you.

Here’s what we got for you today:

• Your favorite tech products have loose lips and boy are they singing.

• Who’s buying, selling, trading, your personal data?

• Action tip of the day

Tech Companies Aren’t About That Privacy Life

You’ve got something called a digital footprint (DF). We all have one and, believe us, it is far from small. Your DF is a measure of everything you do online such as (but not limited to):

• Store purchases

• Social media posts

• Site visits

• Even the things you delete…

Companies have upped the ante to make sure they can collect way more than your name, age, and location.

The heavy hitters like Meta (fka Facebook), Instagram, AirBnB, and TikTok track your facial movements every chance they get in order to build a picture of your likeness.

Dating apps like Tinder store your weight, bank details, your messaging habits with other users, behavior across other apps, and more to keep you looking for love longer (yikes).

Retail stores like Walmart have self-checkout systems to take more pictures of you than the paparazzi does of Kim Kardashian.

Now we’re not saying you should quit all apps cold turkey and stop going to the store.

But understand that when you give apps permission to collect your data, you’re allowing them to do whatever they want with it (it’s in the terms you said yes to). 

Who’s Buying, Selling, and Trading Your Data?

Two words: Data brokers.

No, they’re not brokers like your local mom & pop insurance broker down the street. These are massive businesses that amass, analyze, and sell your information without you knowing nor giving you anything at all in return.

They collect info from anywhere they can:

• data breaches posted on the dark web

• property records

• browsing history

• social media info, and more.

As nefarious as they sound, brokers are valuable to people who require consumer data to improve their business. However they can also be valuable resources for abusers and stalkers. A double-edged sword.

This data is also used by artificial intelligence researchers to train the next generation of apps and tools.

Your selfies are literally making the robots smarter.

Unfortunately, data brokers remain largely unregulated, with only a few states and countries putting more restrictions on them.

What you can do about it to make life simpler

Your best option is to think about the tools and products you use. Then remove what you actually don’t need. 

Removing the unnecessary products not only reduces complexity, but also limits your DF.

For solid alternatives to the more invasive apps, you should check out:

• AlternativeTo

• Open Source AlternativeTo - many open source tools tend to be more privacy conscious.

Regardless of what you do next, understand what personal data you are giving to apps and services, and the possible implications of giving it away.

Here are some questions to help you think about it:

• Does this service need this information about you to function?

• Do you know what data is being collected by the specific service? If so, you now have a better idea of what information you can protect.

For example: if an app collects your login IP address, you can use a VPN to circumvent tracking (we’ll talk about this another day).

And if a service doesn’t really need your personal info to function properly, just put in obfuscated info.

One of the best things you can do is read the Terms of Service…

Haha, but no one has time for that. As a way to get the fast details, check out Terms of Service; Didn’t Read.

For added measure, look over the Privacy Policies when you get a moment as well.

Action Tip of The Day

Delete your old, unused online accounts. These are just waiting to be picked up by web scrapers and brokers only to increase your online attack exposure.

That's all we have for you today. There's a lot more, of course, but then you'll think we're really crazy. Not that we care, but it's better that you get this info in bytes so you can actually do something about it.

But if you want more, reply "I want to eat" and we'll cook something up for you.

Anyways, bye for now.

DISCLAIMER: This newsletter is strictly educational and some entertainment. Please do not use easily identifiable data online, as you do not know who is going to give it away.