Recent data-breach scandals, such as the Facebook-Cambridge Analytical Data Scandal, have been inciting privacy concerns all around the world. Escape hacking attempts, cyberstalking, personal data profiles, location tracking, personalized marketing, and data breaches by understanding the ways they work, their effects on your day-to-day life, and how you can take action.
Why Does Privacy Matter?
Just like you may not want your friends to know about your deepest secrets, you may not want your family members, key interests, travel plans, or political beliefs to be revealed by major companies such as Google and Facebook. Unfortunately, not only can your information in many search engines be legally searched by lawyers and sold to companies, but it can also be used to display advertisements and alter search results.
In civil court cases, such as divorce, Google welcomes lawyers to read through the data lured from you over the years by AI and trackers (and use it against you). According to donttrack.us, which is one of DuckDuckGo’s original campaigns, Google answered over 100,000 requests for accessing personal data collections in one year.
In the Facebook–Cambridge Analytical Data Scandal, for example, nearly 87 million Facebook users’ sensitive information was bought without their consent and used to run political campaigns. In the end, Facebook was caught and fined 5 billion dollars, but the data could not be unleaked.
Furthermore, data collection prevents us from receiving holistic search results. Your Google search results are filtered before they are shown to you. A “filter bubble” is the technical name for this. No matter how many different sources you check, with a filter bubble, you may still be receiving only one side of an argument. Filter bubbles can alter your opinions and values and are most commonly referenced through their effect on news and politics. Today, the platforms that people use to get news are the platforms that are most affected by filter bubbles. According to Pew Research Center, “About two-thirds of U.S. adults say they get news… from websites or apps (sixty-eight percent) or search engines like Google (sixty-five percent). About half (fifty-three percent) say they get news from social media.” The growing number of people using potentially biased sources in their every-day lives make filter bubbles a serious problem. A way to work around the filter bubble is to deliberately search for information from several points of view, “training” your engine to give you more holistic results.
How Does Google Gather Information About Us?
A lot of the personal information Google has about you has come from stalking your location—and there are multiple sources through which Google tracks whereabouts. The most transparent trackers are Google Maps and Maze. Other trackers include “Web and App Activity” in your settings, which informs Google when and where you opened a Google-owned app and AI’s reckoning of your camera roll. The personalized albums that pop up on your phone called “people” and “places” have been made by these same image-analyzing AI. In addition, Google can also identify flight confirmations in your Gmail and foresee when you will be out of town.
Google Calendar, Gmail, and Google Hangouts inform Google of your friends and family (and your relationships with them). Subsequently, the data gathered from people you interact with gives Google insight into your interests—and vice versa. Shared calendar events are the most obvious example. Google also logs your YouTube watch history and YouTube search history. Interestingly enough, Google does not hide these lists from users.
What Can We Do?
DuckDuckGo is a multi-billion dollar web security organization that provides a private way to search the web. The search engine claims to establish absolute user anonymity, which means it is impossible for it to differentiate your query from anyone else’s. DuckDuckGo redirects trackers on sites and mail, does not look at IP address information, blocks cookies, keeps no search or view history, keeps no track of device location, and does not ask users to create user profiles. Without personal files, advertisements are not personalized, search results are not narrowed, and personal information is not sold or shared. The organization has donated $3,650,000 to other organizations with the same values according to their official website.
Of course, no program comes without its faults. Last year, DuckDuckGo partnered with Microsoft and allowed Microsoft to collect certain data from mobile devices with the DuckDuckGo browser. DuckDuckGo users protested and the company eventually reverted back to its original data collection state. This comes to show that any company, regardless of their mission, can start selling user data for profit. In fact, even when a company claims to not track users, there is no definite way to check. However, just because we can never fully escape tracking, does not mean we should not try to limit it as best we can. As of now, DuckDuckGo remains a company that is trusted by millions of users and there is no evidence to believe that they are not providing the privacy they claim to now.
Does Incognito Mode on Google Chrome Provide the Same Privacy as DuckDuckGo?
Do not let the name deceive you; Google Chrome’s “Incognito Mode” is not incognito at all. Using Incognito Mode creates the illusion of anonymity by not displaying search history information on the users’ end of the screen. On the other side of the screen, the user’s location continues to be tracked, clicks continue to be monitored, and visited websites continue to be documented to create a personal profile with all your information. Google knows more about you than you think.
Now, more than ever, your personal information is at risk. Nearly every time you interact with the web, pieces of your life are recorded and stored permanently by influential companies like Google and Apple. Do not accept cookies, search on DuckDuckGo instead of Google, avoid voice assistant, train your search engine to provide holistic results, and only share your address with apps when necessary. Limit tracking and protect your identity online.
