What is a digital footprint?

  

Have you ever looked something up on Google, and then forgotten about it until Instagram suddenly starts to show you ads about your search every 2 seconds? It may feel a bit creepy that your phone knows what you want more than you do. Websites can give us these types of interactions through something called personalized ads, and this is possible because of our digital footprint. 

Everyone who is online has a digital footprint. Simply put our digital footprint is all the information that there is about us online. Every time we go online we leave a “trail of data” in our wake and this information is collected and stored. Everything is collected, even our private messages, which we would expect to be private, are attached to our carriers. However it's important to recognize that privacy policies still exist, so no one can read the messages, but they are stored and can therefore be a security risk as they could be accessed. One of the most straightforward examples of this is when an individual posts on social media. When we register to a website and post and comment, we know that this can be tracked, but even when we don't, websites track us. This data that is being taken in invisible ways is called a “passive footprint”. This can be created by observing your interactions, how long you view a post, if you like or share, when you are online, what you search for, and which ads you click on. This creates your “audience profile”.

These types of profiles are one of the main sources of income for websites like Instagram, Google, Youtube, and Facebook. Have you considered how these websites continue to run? You aren't paying them and the costs must be incomprehensibly large. As the documentary “The Social Dilemma” states, “If you’re not paying for the product, then you are the product”. This is why it is nearly impossible to stop these types of websites from tracking you because that’s the way they make money. “We’re the product. Our attention is the product being sold to advertisers”. But there are some ways that you can limit or decrease the data you leave behind. Kaspersky, an anti-virus provider recommends some of the following approaches.

What you can do to limit your active digital footprint: 

1. Delete any old accounts 

2. Don’t overshare on social media 

3. Refrain from sharing information with unsecured websites

4. Review your privacy settings 

What you can do to limit your passive digital footprint:

1. If possible, don't log in or create profiles when you use applications 

2. Use a VPN

3. Don’t share your contacts with any apps

4. Create secure passwords which you don’t share 

But there is one more threat to your privacy, which you might have not even thought about. What are you agreeing to when you agree to cookies? A cookie is a text file that stores data about you, mainly your identification. When you go online, the server identifies you and then it can personalize your experience. This seems unharmful, making the experience better for you couldn’t be bad, and if it was bad, why are we so easily accepting cookies without even reading about what we are accepting?

Cookies are an important part of the internet experience, they remember your login data and your shopping cart and are mainly made to make your experience online easier and better, in themselves they aren't bad. These types of cookies are called “first-party cookies” and are made by the website you're browsing.  But there are worse cookies that can be used in bad ways. There is a specific type of cookie called a “zombie cookie” for example, which can collect and store your information, then sell it to the highest bidder. The umbrella term for these versions of cookies is generally  “third-party cookies”.

And now we come back to the original question, have ads ever followed you around on the internet? This is why; third-party cookies. These cookies are created not by the website you are visiting but by advertisers. They track everything you do and so by extension what you are interested in. Since they aren’t connected to the website you are visiting they follow you even when you leave the website and this is when they start to give you personalized ads, those based on searches you made in completely other places. 

After doing all this research I have started to realize that I need to work on decreasing my digital footprint. Before this, I didn't even understand what cookies were and what they did, I just mindlessly accepted them when the pop-up showed itself. I have also realized that I have many old social media accounts which I have not deleted and are still public on platforms. When looking back I can say that I have definitely overshared online on multiple occasions and shared all my photos and contacts with websites. After posting this I'm going to try and go through my old accounts and take away as much as possible. I think I'm also going to go through my privacy settings on my phone to take away the access that apps have to my camera roll, location, camera, and microphone as I feel those are unnecessary to always share. I hope you might try doing the same.

Sources: 

Audience Profiles: Why They're Essential to Advertising | BRIDGE (thebridgecorp.com)

What Does Your Social Media Footprint Say About You? | DigitalGrads

Privacy and security in messaging apps, explained | Android Central

How to Stop Personalized Ads and Search Results in Google and Facebook (helpdeskgeek.com)

What is a Digital Footprint? (kaspersky.com)

What is a Cookie? How it works and ways to stay safe (kaspersky.com)

What are cookies, and why do websites ask us to accept them? - Vox