How Safe Is Your Online Data?
Over the past few months we've had several scares about hacks and data mining. Cambridge Analytica, for example, were found to be helping Trump by collating huge amounts of data from Facebook and then targetting ads at select groups of possible voters.
While this is extreme, it happens everyday in small ways that you may not be aware of.
Have an author website? How many personal details are on there?
Google and other search engines will be taking that data as they 'crawl' across the web and using it, anonymously, to build up a picture of nations, localities, cities so they can then sell that to third parties. While laws exist to protect you and me from abuse of that, anonynous data isn't always so well covered.
In some nations it's not covered at all.
Logged onto a Russian based site recently? Would you even know? What if the site is based in China? Just because it has a '.co.uk' suffix doesn't mean it's based in the UK.
Then there are cookies. Each site you go to leaves a few of these behind so that when you come back they recognise you. Or they are used to collate anonymous data for the webmaster, data that can show which nation people logged in from, what browser they used, and which link they followed to get there.
For authors, it can be useful to know that most of your site visitors are from Germany or the UK. Larger companies find this especially useful.
That, however, is not all they do.
These cookies leave a trail of crumbs that other sites, like Facebook, read. Ever wonder how they target adverts to you? Facebook looks at the cookies, sees what sites you've been to and decides what ads to target at you.
If you've recently looked for furniture via Google, you'll find furniture ads. Use ebay a lot? You'll get ads for other auction sites appearing. Ever been on a dating site? Be prepared for Philippino brides to suddenly appear.
Your data is valuable. What you do, where you go online, what your political views are, everything. It's that data that means Facebook and Google are free to use. If you didn't give it, you'd have to pay for using these sites.
The laws surrounding data usage, such as GDPR, are designed so no abuse can take place. It's also why net neutrality is such a big issue for Facebook. Lose it and they'd have to pay a fee to get on the fast track which could result in people, us, asking why we're getting ads when we're paying a higher price for a service.
There are ways to remove the cookies you don't want, or even to remove all browsing history and cookies. How to do so will depend on which browser you're using. Guides are available at the digital trends website. For Internet Explorer 9 and older versions, microsoft have a guide on their support site. For newer versions of IE, the University of Wisconsin-Madison have an easy to use guide.
Your data is a valuable resource to online companies as they depend on advertising revenue to keep going and keep their pages free. Most of what they do is harmless or, at worst, irritating. It's also worth remebering that if your author website uses cookies for data gathering then you, too, are part of this, as are ACW when you visit the page.
The short answer to the question at the start is: safe. How safe depends on what measures you take and how you react.
Answers to most of your questions are available online, just type your question into a search bar. But be warned, whichever site you go to will track you, but rarely will it be for nefarious purposes.
While this is extreme, it happens everyday in small ways that you may not be aware of.
Have an author website? How many personal details are on there?
Google and other search engines will be taking that data as they 'crawl' across the web and using it, anonymously, to build up a picture of nations, localities, cities so they can then sell that to third parties. While laws exist to protect you and me from abuse of that, anonynous data isn't always so well covered.
In some nations it's not covered at all.
Logged onto a Russian based site recently? Would you even know? What if the site is based in China? Just because it has a '.co.uk' suffix doesn't mean it's based in the UK.
Then there are cookies. Each site you go to leaves a few of these behind so that when you come back they recognise you. Or they are used to collate anonymous data for the webmaster, data that can show which nation people logged in from, what browser they used, and which link they followed to get there.
For authors, it can be useful to know that most of your site visitors are from Germany or the UK. Larger companies find this especially useful.
That, however, is not all they do.
These cookies leave a trail of crumbs that other sites, like Facebook, read. Ever wonder how they target adverts to you? Facebook looks at the cookies, sees what sites you've been to and decides what ads to target at you.
If you've recently looked for furniture via Google, you'll find furniture ads. Use ebay a lot? You'll get ads for other auction sites appearing. Ever been on a dating site? Be prepared for Philippino brides to suddenly appear.
Your data is valuable. What you do, where you go online, what your political views are, everything. It's that data that means Facebook and Google are free to use. If you didn't give it, you'd have to pay for using these sites.
The laws surrounding data usage, such as GDPR, are designed so no abuse can take place. It's also why net neutrality is such a big issue for Facebook. Lose it and they'd have to pay a fee to get on the fast track which could result in people, us, asking why we're getting ads when we're paying a higher price for a service.
There are ways to remove the cookies you don't want, or even to remove all browsing history and cookies. How to do so will depend on which browser you're using. Guides are available at the digital trends website. For Internet Explorer 9 and older versions, microsoft have a guide on their support site. For newer versions of IE, the University of Wisconsin-Madison have an easy to use guide.
Your data is a valuable resource to online companies as they depend on advertising revenue to keep going and keep their pages free. Most of what they do is harmless or, at worst, irritating. It's also worth remebering that if your author website uses cookies for data gathering then you, too, are part of this, as are ACW when you visit the page.
The short answer to the question at the start is: safe. How safe depends on what measures you take and how you react.
Answers to most of your questions are available online, just type your question into a search bar. But be warned, whichever site you go to will track you, but rarely will it be for nefarious purposes.
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