Your smartphone. Your TV.
Every time you connect to the Internet, hundreds of tech companies and advertisers are watching you.
where you are the product.
Your personal data is being collected and sold by hundreds of companies, from tech startups to advertisers to data brokers. Your entire digital profile - where you live, what you buy, your medical history, the high school crush you're still following on Instagram - is for sale without your knowledge or consent. Why? Because they want to influence how you spend your time and money. They want to shape your world.
Find Out HowYour data is for sale
Your devices share data
Designed to manipulate
Networks are vulnerable
Third parties are collecting your browsing data.
“What this [tracking] technology is really good at doing is following you from site to site…it knows when you come back, and it knows to look you up, and based on what it has profiled about you in the past, it will treat you accordingly and decide which advertisements to give you.”
Digital TrendsYour ISP may be tracking your personal data.
“President Donald Trump signed legislation Monday killing privacy rules that would have required internet service providers to get your explicit consent before they share or sell your web browsing history and other sensitive information.”
NBC NewsYour antivirus software may be selling your data.
“Jumpshot’s data comes from 100 million devices worldwide, whose users have downloaded free security software from partner Avast.”
Marketing LandYour VPN may be selling your data to third parties.
“The Best VPN recently peeked under the hood of over 100 of the biggest VPN services. All told, 26 of them collect three or more important log files that could contain personal and identifying information — things like your IP address, location, bandwidth data, and connection timestamps.”
The Next WebFingerprinting techniques identify you even when you’re in incognito mode.
“...computer scientists have developed new browser fingerprinting software that identifies users across Web browsers with a degree of accuracy that beats the most sophisticated single-browser techniques used today.”
IEEE SpectrumYour apps may share private information with Facebook, even if you don’t have a Facebook account.
“Millions of smartphone users confess their most intimate secrets to apps, including when they want to work on their belly fat or the price of the house they checked out last weekend….in many cases that data is being shared with someone else: Facebook Inc.”
The Wall Street JournalYour health insurer is monitoring your medical device usage.
“As many CPAP users discover, the life-altering device comes with caveats: Health insurance companies are often tracking whether patients use them. If they aren’t, the insurers might not cover the machines or the supplies that go with them.”
ProPublicaYour ISP knows what devices you have connected to your network.
“‘...home networks can no longer be considered ‘trusted’ environments,’ says Noah Apthorpe, from Princeton University's computer science department.”
WiredYour photos are mined for metadata.
“Granting an app permission to see photos on your device also lets that app see where you’ve been, because all of your pictures have geotags on them by default.”
GizmodoYour smart home devices are always listening...
“Voice-based devices like Amazon’s Echo and Google Home are always ‘awake,’ passively listening for commands to activate.”
Washington Post...and could soon keep track of your moods...
“Google's patent applications outline how audio and visual signals could be used to determine a speaker's mood or medical condition.”
CBS News...and have a team of people who may be listening.
“Amazon.com Inc. employs thousands of people around the world to help improve the Alexa digital assistant powering its line of Echo speakers. The team listens to voice recordings captured in Echo owners’ homes and offices.”
BloombergSocial media is built to be addictive, and that means driving up anger and fear.
“Facebook’s news feed, for instance, runs on an algorithm that promotes whatever content wins the most engagement. Studies find that negative, primal emotions — fear, anger — draw the most engagement. So posts that provoke those emotions rise naturally.”
The New York TimesYour apps influence you to give up your data.
“Facebook’s facial recognition options show users a bright blue box urging them to accept the company scanning their faces for its files, while the option to decline this scanning is hidden inside a page you only see by clicking ‘manage data settings.’”
FortuneYour social media activity is being used to impact your vote.
“The data analytics firm that worked with Donald Trump’s election team and the winning Brexit campaign harvested millions of Facebook profiles of US voters...and used them to build a powerful software program to predict and influence choices at the ballot box.”
The GuardianMore than half a billion smart devices remain vulnerable to DNS Rebinding attack
“[Researchers found] another half-billion IoT devices...that can be taken over with DNS rebinding attacks: "87 percent of switches, routers and access points; 78 percent of streaming media players and speakers; 77 percent of IP phones; 75 percent of IP cameras; 66 percent of printers; and 57 percent of smart TVs."
Boing BoingYour child’s toys may be putting them at risk.
“Conversations with an internet-connected toy could let hackers snoop on your child's name, school, location, likes, dislikes and location, according to a [FBI] warning.”
NBC NewsYour antivirus software isn’t as powerful as it says it is.
“Since the beginning, antivirus software vendors have lied about their accuracy. Many claim 100 percent accuracy in detecting bad programs and we, despite nearly every computer being protected by an antivirus program, are still exploited by malware.”
CSO