Today, Facebook, TikTok, and Google—and companies like them—are inextricably linked to our daily lives. They link billions, deliver knowledge at lightning speed and empower new forms of speech and trade. The allure of convenience makes it easy to overlook this multi-dimensional maze of expansive consumer data collection. These practices are of course very much hidden to the average user. DreamingCrypto will unveil these secrets, explore the value of personal data, and discuss how individuals can reclaim control over their digital lives, while considering decentralized alternatives like Irys. Follow the signs, heed the runes, and surf the swell of this new decentralized epoch.

The Value of Your Data

Understanding Data Worth

In the online era, our personal data is one of the most valuable commodities on the planet. From all these points and more, companies learn things that allow them to build intimate portraits of their users. This data collection goes far beyond what users explicitly enter. We know that big platforms scrape data from the public web. These players range from local newspapers to third-party marketing partners and advertisers to sometimes credit bureaus. This data is then aggregated in order to develop a holistic view of people’s interests, behaviors and preferences.

The data collected is incredibly comprehensive. Demographic, psychographic, online behavior, and purchase history are all included in the file available for purchase. Tech giants monitor how often, how long, and when users engage with their platforms. This degree of precision enables businesses to develop extremely targeted ad campaigns, making it more likely that users will engage with and convert on ads. The ability to target highly specific ads to people, based on data from all over the internet, is the main driver of revenue for these companies.

This collection of user data allows companies to continuously optimize their algorithms and deliver a better user experience as a whole. Through the analysis of user behavior, businesses are able to spot trends, predict future user actions, and customize content to fit individual preferences. This kind of tailored experience increases user engagement on the platform, ensuring people stay more engaged and constantly returning to it. The more data a company has, the better it can understand its users and thus provide them with more relevant content and services.

Economic Impact on Companies

The economic value that user data creates for these companies is tremendous. The practice, which uses detailed user data to inform tailored marketing campaigns, brings in billions of dollars annually to the ad tech industry. Advertisers amplify this disinformation by using predictive modeling to advertise far more accurately than old-school ad targeting ever could. As a result, they produce higher click-through rates, higher conversions, and in turn, greater revenue for the corporations.

User data is key to driving innovation and new product developments. Using a behavioral lens, companies can uncover unmet needs and create products and services that fulfill them. It is this data-driven approach that inspires and fuels innovation. It allows businesses to stay ahead of the competition and continue growing their customer base month over month. User data gives companies a wealth of information to base important decisions on. These decisions shape product development, marketing strategies, and other core business functions.

At the same time, the collection and use of this user data raises some serious ethical concerns. Privacy advocates have long contended that companies are collecting more data than they need. They think these companies use it in ways that are opaque and arbitrary. Added to that is the increasing fear of data breaches and how personal information could be used against you. Companies are under increasing pressure to be more transparent with their data collection and usage. Simultaneously, consumers are calling for greater control over the use of their personal data.

Strategies for Protecting Your Data

Limiting Data Sharing

Protecting personal data in the era of Big Tech will take big, bold, proactive steps to face our future. You won’t be able to avoid data collection altogether, but you can do things to minimize your data footprint. In so doing you can protect your own privacy even more! The first and most critical strategy is to read the privacy policies of the platforms and services you use. Privacy 101 To protect your online privacy, first know what data is being tracked. Then, find out how that data is being used.

Platforms like Roadbotics, Waze, and others provide features to help organizations restrict data sharing to third-party users. Unlike Amazon, which requires that its users be able to opt-out of having their information shared with third-party advertisers. By utilizing these features, users can limit the data that is currently being gathered and shared. We must be conscious of what we are posting on social media and digital channels. Anything you post on the internet isn’t really yours anymore, and companies can collect and use this data however they want.

Perhaps an even more impactful approach is to use privacy-preserving browsers and search engines. These new tools are specifically intended to reduce the amount of data that is collected and shared and better protect user privacy. They tend to come preloaded with ad blockers, tracker blockers, and even VPNs. By using these tools, individuals can significantly reduce the amount of data that is being collected about their online activities.

Adjusting Privacy Settings

Change your privacy settings on social media accounts and other online services. This is an important step in the right direction to help you manage what private data you disclose. Nearly all platforms offer a range of privacy settings. These features give users the ability to determine what the public can see of their posts, profile data, etc. Set these defaults wisely to reduce what is exposed to the public to the greatest extent possible. This simple, proactive step is a great way to lower the risk of surprise data collection.

It is equally important to know what permissions you’re giving each app or website. For instance, most apps today ask for access to sensitive personal information like your contacts, location, and camera. Systematically reviewing these permissions and revoking access to data that is not essential can help protect individual privacy. Make permission auditing a part of your development workflow. Deleting apps that you rarely or never use will go a long way toward limiting unnecessary data collection.

Creating complex passwords that are different for each account is a third basic way to safeguard sensitive information online. Password managers take the pain out of creating complicated passwords, allowing you to use them across team accounts in a seamless way. Please note, allowing two-factor authentication helps increase your security. It significantly increases the difficulty for someone who isn’t authorized to log into your account, even if they’ve stolen your password.

Your Digital Footprint

Tracking Your Online Activity

A digital footprint is all the information that’s left behind as you use the internet. This ranges from searching history and search terms to social media activity and e-commerce transactions. Firms monitor this behavior to develop elaborate profiles of individuals and psychographic segments and use those to induce them with targeted advertising. Being informed about how this tracking works is key to keeping your privacy intact.

Twitter, for instance, monitors activity on third-party websites and applications across the internet as well as users’ web browsing history. Twitter’s privacy policy states that it does not link this browsing history to personally identifiable information. The way they’re collecting that data should give everyone pause, as it raises serious privacy concerns. Beyond the real-time improvements, the platform actively tracks and logs users’ time zones. It’s been gathering passive GPS data from their phone, essentially mapping out the places they go and where they move.

To do so, companies utilize a network of technologies, such as cookies, web beacons, and tracking pixels to surveil consumers across their online activity. Cookies are little text files that websites place on users’ computers to remember their preferences and follow them around the internet. Web beacons and tracking pixels are tiny graphics included in websites and emails. These are the same tools companies use to gain an uncanny understanding of user behavior. By making people aware of how these technologies operate, they can take action to prevent or mitigate their application.

Device and App Interactions

Beyond monitoring users’ actions on the web, companies harvest data from internet-connected devices and apps. You follow a unique identifier and users’ actions across third-party websites and apps. In addition, you collect GPS, other sensor data and presence data of surrounding devices like cell towers, Bluetooth-enabled devices and Wi-Fi access points. This information paints an incredibly detailed picture of users’ physical and digital worlds.

The way that device and app data is collected is further aggravating the significant privacy concerns that it brings. Companies can use this data to track users' movements, monitor their activities, and build detailed profiles of their interests and behaviors. As we’ve seen with companies like Clearview AI, this data can be employed in deeply invasive and harmful ways, from targeted advertising to predictive policing.

To help safeguard your privacy, be proactive about what you share with apps. Protect your privacy by minimizing the information you provide to them. By regularly reviewing app permissions and revoking apps’ access to information they don’t need—like your microphone or camera—it’s possible to minimize opportunities for data collection. Adopting privacy-focused apps and services is important. These tools are specifically created to reduce the amount of data being collected and maximize your privacy.

Data Collection Across Platforms

How Apps Share Information

With data collection across platforms, companies are able to create even more robust profiles on users. By sharing information between different apps and services, companies can gain a deeper understanding of users' interests, behaviors, and preferences. This multi-device, cross-platform tracking capability is a boon for companies looking to run increasingly targeted and manipulatable advertising campaigns and personalized content across devices and networks.

Google, for instance, tracks what users do on third-party websites and applications if they use Google services. This means that Google can track users' browsing history, search queries, and online purchases, even when they are not using Google's own products. Similarly, Facebook, through its vast network of platforms and services, has deep access to data from social media users around the world.

This opaque, cross-platform data collection raises serious campaign finance and privacy concerns. For one, companies must create detailed profiles of users, often without their explicit consent. They employ this data for a variety of applications including targeted advertising, customized content delivery, and yes—predictive policing. Additionally, it further undermines users’ ability to control their data and maintain their privacy.

Implications of Cross-Application Tracking

The implications of cross-application tracking are far-reaching. The possible experiences that companies can create using this data are endless and can be incredibly personalized. This creates big issues around privacy, security, and misuse of data. One of the greatest worries is the opacity and helplessness people have regarding data-gathering operations. Users are frequently left in the dark about what data is being gathered. They’re just as blind to the extent of how it’s being used and shared with others.

Finally, cross-application tracking can establish filter bubbles and echo chambers. By tracking user behavior and preferences, companies have the ability to tailor content to individual users. This fosters spaces where users are only presented information that supports their current worldview. This makes more polarization, because now both sides are polarized. As a result, people feel they cannot even have the discussion with someone with an opposing position in a productive way.

Decentralized, community-built alternatives such as Irys provide a promising answer to all of these challenges. Users receive more transparency and control over their data. By having the ability to choose who they share it with, these platforms can work towards a more equitable and transparent creator economy. At the same time, full decentralization is a challenge as well, in terms of scalability, security, and governance.

Taking Control of Your Data

Practical Steps to Enhance Privacy

It’s time to take control of your data, but it takes a proactive, informed approach. There are many tangible ways to improve your privacy. These are the biggest and most important actions you can take to reduce all the data about you that’s collected. Scan and fix the privacy settings on each of your web-connected accounts. This step is especially important for keeping your personal information safe. This applies to social media companies, email services, and all other online services.

Be conscious of the information you post online. Being aware of who and where you’re giving information to is key. Anything you post on social media or other online platforms can be collected and used by companies for various purposes. Limit where you share information and use privacy-oriented social media networks that put user privacy first.

Enabling Incognito mode or private browsing on whichever search engine you use—including Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, or others—can keep your data more secure. This will stop the browser from recording your history of browsing, cookies, and other data. There are a few key points to clarify about how Incognito mode works with ever-evolving trackers. Websites are able to quickly and efficiently track you in other ways, like IP address tracking.

Tools and Resources for Data Protection

Browsers like Brave and DuckDuckGo, which aim to maximize privacy and minimize data collection, would be hard pressed to foster meaningful interop in lieu of this data. These browsers from DuckDuckGo to Opera come loaded with privacy-protecting offerings like ad- and tracker blockers and built-in VPNs.

Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) are indispensable tools that protect your privacy by fully encrypting your internet traffic and masking your IP address. This severely limits the ability of ad tech firms to follow you across the internet and determine where you live. You have hundreds of VPN providers to wade through. So do your homework and choose a good one!

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is another great resource, offering extensive information and resources on all aspects of data protection, from guides to articles to tools. The EFF makes available a number of privacy-protecting browser extensions. One of the stars is Privacy Badger, which makes your privacy a priority by automatically blocking trackers. While rewarding new strategies and tools can help, it’s essential to maintain the understanding that no data privacy initiative can ever be 100 percent effective. By taking proactive steps to protect your data, you can significantly reduce your digital footprint and regain control over your online identity.