How Am I Being Tracked Online? A Story.

For many, the idea of being tracked online doesn’t sound all that scary. “I am pretty boring” is a common comment from people when discussing online data collection and tracking, and worse is, it’s usually followed by “so I doubt anyone is actually tracking me.”

That’s because many of us think of tracking as some government agency, looking for nefarious activity, and most of us aren’t worried about that. We use the internet to shop, talk to friends, explore our hobbies, and keep up with the world news.

What people don’t always realize, however, is that your daily browsing, no matter how mundane or boring you may think it might be, is pure profit for Big Tech.

For Big Tech, they don’t care what you do online, they care that they know what it is, and then find a way to monetize it. You may think you’re boring, or not of interest, but I bet you shop online.

Knowing what sites you visit, the links you click, the Facebook posts you comment on or like, all build a profile of who Big Tech thinks you are and then opens the door for them to put products, via ads, in front of you that you might take interest in.

These sites usually use cookies to track you around the web when they can. Otherwise, they rely on their own networks by hoping that users rely on many of their platforms for social media, or even things like search, email, and news.

If you’re not clicking those ads, they know that too and will modify their offers to you until they find out what’s working.

A personal example is that I shop for vinyl records, I love music and love shopping for new albums. Yet, I take privacy seriously and offering me ads via my interests can be hard. Most ads I get make no sense to who I am, and I like it that way.

But it only takes one click

As part of my threat model, I allow myself to use Instagram. It fills a professional need I have and allows me to connect to those in the same field. Because I use it only on iOS, the application itself is protected from cross tracking, so they can only see what I am doing inside the app itself.

This does, of course, create a profile of who I am to them. In Instagram, I get ads more relevant to the topics I am following on the app, but also is a great example of how they can figure you out.

I don’t shop for records on Instagram, but I did recently follow two record stores in my local area. That alone gives them an indication I like music, and because these are exclusively vinyl record stores, they can infer from this that I like vinyl records.

Then it happened. I got my first ad for another record store. Incidentally, it was for an album I already have, but a genre I love. Without even noticing it was an ad, and not the record stores I already had followed; I liked the post. The ads started flowing in.

Now, while my iOS device might be protecting cross-application tracking, I think we all understand that Instagram is owned by Meta. Meta owns Facebook, one of the largest Big Tech companies that track users everywhere they go, Facebook users or not.

Now, in my threat model, Facebook or Meta knowing I like vinyl records is no threat to me, but it doesn’t mean I want that. Obviously, I could have avoided this by not using Instagram, but I took the risk and paid the price. For my own needs, it was a price I was willing to pay, but that’s not always the case.

This one example just shows you how even the most mundane of users can generate money for these companies. My single click cost that record story money in their ad budget that went to Meta. If I was to buy something, the record store would then see that their investment was worth it and pour more ad money into Meta.

Instagram had around 1.2 billion active users in 2021. If each of them clicked one single add, just once, for around $1 a click, Instagram makes over $1 billion. For those not taking any privacy precautions and using multiple Meta platforms, plus a non-privacy respecting search engine, and has a much larger digital footprint, the ads will be so precise, they can almost guarantee multiple clicks per month, at worst, per year.

Tracking you online is a multi-billion-dollar industry.

But you can help stop it

First, use a privacy-respecting search engine such as Startpage or DuckDuckGo. Install a browser plugin such as Privacy Protection of uBlock Origin. You can also take simple steps to protect your privacy,  and have a little fun outsmarting Big Tech algorithms.

In any case, Big Tech wants to track you, it doesn’t matter if you live the most boring or more exciting lifestyle. If they can sell ad space to companies to target you, or sell ad companies information about you, it makes you worth tracking.