How many apps and web services have you used today? Whether you’re trying to get in shape, plan the perfect holiday, indulge in some retail therapy or simply catch up with friends, a convenient, digital helper is only a couple of clicks away.
But with an infinite variety of tools at our fingertips for free, have you ever considered what they might be getting from you in return?
No Such Thing as a Free Lunch
Just because the service is free doesn’t mean they’re not getting something from you. Almost all of the apps and sites you use every day are designed to constantly track your every move and harvest details of your personal life. Companies are willing to pay big money to receive data that can be used to shape marketing and advertising campaigns.
Your online activity is constantly monitored in many ways. You probably know about the cookies websites use to record activity, but did you know that, for example:
- Facebook collects at least 98 different bits of data on every individual user, including your exact location, your income, and even the value of your home?
- Google is collecting your location data even if location services are off? Marketers use this data to identify people who are, say, near a particular restaurant or shop and deliver targeted advertising to them.
- Three out of the four apps installed on your Android device track your location, how you use your device, and behaviour on popular apps like Tinder, Spotify, Uber, PayPal, Twitter, and Snapchat? Some others are even accessing your camera without your knowledge.
- Yahoo and AOL scan the content of your email accounts with them for certain keywords with the goal of providing advertising targeted toward your interests. Google also tracks most of the purchases you make online from any source using your Gmail account.
Take Back Control
Even a year on from the EU GDPR, which was designed to provide you with strong new data privacy rights, thousands of apps and web services continue to harvest your personal information and activity.
Meanwhile, most of the time you’re using those free and convenient services, you’re given little or no idea what information is collected by whom, or what happens to it afterwards.
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
myGaru provides an all-in-one app to collect, protect and make the most out of the personal data you create online.
We can help you stop uninvited attempts to harvest your information — and better yet you can even pocket some of the profit your data is used to generate.
Sign up to our waitlist today on https://mygaru.com/ to be amongst the first to test the beta version of the app, or follow our socials to stay up to date.
