When you leave this blog and open another website or app, you should be aware that it’s very likely that your behavior on that website or app is being monitored, measured and analyzed. This is done so marketers are better able to profile you, and understand you. The more they know about you, the better they can target you. The better they can target you, the more money they can make with sending you relevant advertisements. The better their profile of you is, however, the less privacy you will have. They are not just interested in the websites you visit or on what ads you click. They want to know more.
Who are ’they’? All people that collect your data and combine your data. So in this case, ’they’ means a lot of people. Millions of people working in the data industry.
Just think about it. The more they know about who you are and what lives inside of you, the better they are able to target you with relevant information, advertisements, political campaigns. Most people always tell me “I’m not worried because I still see useless advertisements all the time, so that must mean they don’t have a good profile on me”. Well, that’s maybe because you only see the obvious advertisements. You don’t see the hidden ones. Learn about the difference between outbound and inbound marketing, and you will realize what I mean.
For now, I will just say: be aware of that you are being targeted and profiles everywhere online. Try to stay in control of what ’the internet’ knows about you. Try to withstand the temptation to click on things, knowing that most of these ‘interesting’ things are only presented to you because clicking on them will give the profilers more data to build your personal profile. Basically every second you spend online is being tracked and measured. You will see that when you really understand this, you will slightly start to change your online behaviour.
I’ve create 2 websites dedicated to online privacy.
https://www.mijnonlineprivacy.nl (Dutch, coming soon)
https://www.masteronlineprivacy.com (English, in progress)
