Did you know that companies sell your data that you provide? Social media is one of the key places that companies are able to gather your personal data. You might not think much about the information you need to provide when setting up your account like first and last name, date of birth, occupation, where do you live, etc. But it’s worth its weight in gold to major companies like Google and Facebook.
What do the companies use our data for? Have you ever gotten a targeted ad? Last week, you mentioned to someone that you’re really excited about this new book coming out and now you’re seeing ads for it everywhere. They also use your data by conducting statistical analysis. It helps them to understand their customers better and that helps them to increase profits. But sometimes companies will just share your data with third parties without selling it, in exchange, they get benefits like target ads and audience insights.
How can you protect your data? It’s not easy to keep your data secure but here are a few ways that you can control your data:
- Know where your data is stored and who has access to it – By knowing where your data is, it’ll help you in protecting where that data is. If you have your email on multiple devices, any sensitive information will be synced to those devices allowing more eyes to have access to your data.
- Backup your data regularly – this will help if your device is ever stolen. You can see if anything has been changed or compromised if you have earlier versions of your data.
- Protect your identity and login credentials – creating strong passwords and adding two-factor authentication to your accounts adds an extra layer of security.
- Ensure that websites are using encryption – make sure that any websites you visit are properly encrypted. This means checking that the web address includes “https” and a green padlock icon somewhere near your URL.
Keeping your data secure is super important, your data contains sensitive information that could lead to identity theft or worse.