Big Data is Reading Your DMs
Words by Tory Alberts (they/them)
Imagine cameras watching you constantly. How comfortable would you be with omnipresent monitoring, and not just by Big Brother? What if anyone could connect to the cameras and watch you? That’s what Big data’s access to you allows. Everything is tracked and sold. From your age, gender identity, search history, locations, mood, Countdown purchases—the list, quite literally, never ends! Your phone shares the locations where you live and work, your Fitbit knows when you have sex and how long you last, and your smart fridge knows your credit card number. You wouldn’t steal a fridge, but you can hack it.
Shout out to people sharing their Snapchat locations, you’re making a potential attacker not really have to try…
In this age of data hoarding, we’re mainly tracked by these things called cookies and pixels. We’ve all heard of cookies and their annoying pop ups, but do you know what they are? They’re basically a ‘tool’ that remembers all of your website interactions, like what’s in your shopping cart. Pixels are used mostly by social media platforms like TikTok and Meta. They monitor where you've been and when you were there. They then link you and your online activities, and use that information to personalise your ads. If you’re working from home in the comfort of your pyjamas, there are data services that can show your boss if you have opened emails. This is the same tech hackers use if you open spams.
These info hoarders are often careless with how they store our data, making breaches and hacking an unfortunate inevitability. Back in 2015, Ashley Madison—a dating site made specially for cheaters—was hacked, exposing 32 million users' info. Sometimes the infrastructure of the internet allows for attacks that are an invasion of privacy despite the action being completely legal. The BDSM website FetLife allows users to find other users with filters of age, gender, and location. They had a ‘breach’ when a user realised they could exploit the site and post a list of the young women in their area, including their names, locations, and pictures.
Whether it’s a breach or an exploitation of a service, you can be hurt when the internet has no central point of control; no one place where everything can be checked. All breached data brings the possibility of your passwords, full name, email, or even messages and photos being leaked. The aftermath of these breaches have distressing outcomes like blackmail and identity theft. This hoarding is often needless, yet it creates a huge risk for every user unlucky enough to use any particular online service.
Companies will continue to choose profit over privacy until this stops being profitable. Offering the wealthy unrestrained access to our data gives corporations power to shape our realities. This might not be your biggest concern when it concerns your habits or personalised ads, but what about when it impacts democracy? In 2016, controversial consulting firm Cambridge Analytica gathered thousands of data points on two million voters in the USA, as well as other countries. They went through seemingly harmless extensions, such as calculators and calendars, to access a user’s Facebook session cookies. These cookies allowed Cambridge Analytica to log into Facebook as if they were that user. They experimented with showing different kinds of political ads to users, and changed the election’s outcome by 4% by showing ads that encouraged users to vote.
We live in a world where our reality is shaped by what is shown to us by our screens, and each TikTok and YouTube feed is showing a completely distorted and personalised world. Democracy works when everyone has the same information and perception of the world. If what we're exposed to is completely different to those around us, ‘harmony’ becomes elusive and the very concept of truth becomes a distant memory.
We have to choose between privacy or convenience.
Sacrificing some privacy for a tool can feel like a balanced trade, but companies, the government, and hackers are going to take advantage of your decision. The internet and current tech products give us the opportunity to pay to give them our data. Amazon products in general have a habit of harvesting you for all you’re worth: Alexa records you constantly, the latest Roombas map out your floor plan, and, without a warrant, Amazon has provided police in America with footage provided by their Ring door cams (11 times this year so far).
Spotify might seem like a harmless app, but some banks have begun using its predictions of your mood in assessing whether you’ll be approved for a loan. With DNA heritage tests, you’re paying to give away genetic data, and it’s led to unintended consequences like deportation and denied insurance. Depending on what app you’re using, your messages are not just stored forever but can be given directly to the police with no notice. Discord: the home of our country’s proudest drug servers, might not be as sneaky as you think. Companies can also trade your data without consent when they feel like it. Meta gave Spotify and Netflix complete access to users’ chats in exchange for data to help their ‘People You May Know’ algorithm: a feature that connects people with their employers, exes, and even stalkers.
It’s important to remember when it comes to social media and apps in general that if something is free, then you are the product. These companies cannot be trusted to keep you or your data safe. With an ever-increasing amount of cyber attacks, the key is to collect less and protect more, not the opposite.
Selling personal data should not be normalised. Profiting off people’s highly sensitive information should not be normal. Having to go out of your way to opt out of being tracked everywhere you go isn’t fair to people’s autonomy. Only now are we beginning to pay attention to privacy rights and concerns. Yet placing the burden solely on each user can be easily undermined by someone close to you who didn’t realise they were at risk. Pay attention to companies who care about your privacy. Our opinions, and our dissent, can push change.
So, what the fuck are we supposed to do?
First, we need to band together to complain and demand better.
Use services with privacy in mind
Internet browsers such as DuckDuckGo, Brave, and Firefox block third-party trackers and cookies. Even on incognito, Chrome lets the websites you visit track you through your IP, it just doesn't store anything on your phone.
Sticking with your current browser? Install some privacy extensions and delete all extensions that you don’t know to be safe..
Messaging: use Signal, the perfect app for sending nudes, buying drugs, and snitching on your company's unethical practices to the media.
Use a password manager and use *strong passwords.
Apps
Don’t keep any apps you don’t need—your phone’s security is only as strong as your weakest app.
Delete apps known to mess with your head, put you in an echo-chamber, and steal your data (e.g. TikTok and anything Meta).
Hide your data
Post less and post smarter: consider how something could be used against you.
Don’t buy Roombas, DNA tests, smart fridges, or Alexas. Anything that connects to the internet can be hacked if it’s not already giving away your data.
Don’t allow camera, location, or voice access unless the circumstances are 100% trusted and necessary (please turn off your Snap Maps, I’m begging you).
Lie: make the false internet persona of your dreams
Depending on the site and the purpose, it’s a good idea to lie about your age, DOB, name, or your address of any kind. Use burner emails like Guerrilla Mail, or make an email with no information linked to you.
Check what info you’ve already outed about yourself on active accounts. Remove or update any personal details you don't want to share.
Stand up for other people
Ask for consent when posting pictures of other people. Also, a quick message for whoever’s running @nzstyled: stop posting all these people without consent and find a new way to get views.
Don’t cyber hoard!
Less data kept = less risk. If you think you might need something in the future, create a backup of the data you have online, store it on an encrypted hard drive, and delete it from the internet.
Unsubscribe from emails. If you're getting emails you don't want, unsubscribe from newsletters or mailing lists.
Clear browser data. Regularly clear your browsing history, cookies, and cache. This helps reduce the amount of data collected about you while browsing.
Be aware what others can find out about you
Think about all the different accounts you’ve had and how many of them are publicly viewable (Instagram, Reddit, DeviantArt). You’ve undoubtedly forgotten multiple, so think of all the usernames you’ve used and search for them on google. Using quotes, search for your username (“cool_guy”) and your full name (“Cool Guy Smith”) to see what someone else could find about you.
Have a particular un-employer-friendly pic of you out there? Reverse image search to see where it’s turning up and give you a start on getting it back.
You might not want to waste time pretending to be a techie, so if you’re worried with reason and have the means, you can just pay. Find a service that employers use and have a third party find your dirt for you.
There is going to be a lot of information available on you already. What’s important now is staying vigilant on the ways your data is being taken, knowing what you can and can’t change, and doing as much as you can to keep your private life private. Don’t put yourself in an awkward position you don’t need to be in.