Yahoo Finance 21 things big tech firms know about you
The products and platforms created by tech firms are playing an ever-growing role in our lives.
It’d be difficult to imagine what our day would look like, how we’d work or how we’d communicate with each other without our Apple products, Google’s many functionalities or social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.
And while we know a lot of our details exist on these platforms and devices, do we know exactly what they know about us?
Here’s a list of the data that either some or all of the big tech companies (specifically Google, Facebook, Apple, Twitter, Amazon and Microsoft) admit to collecting in their privacy policies:
1. Basic personal information
If you’re on social media at all, they’ll have basic information on you like your name, gender, date of birth, and contact information.
2. Your location and address
A number of tech services will make use of location tracking on smartphones, which means where you live and your typical routes can be tracked.
This information is especially useful for local businesses who want to target a certain geodemographic.
3. Your relationship status
Whether your single or married will influence what you see in advertisements.
So if you’ve just gotten engaged, you might see ads to do with weddings, and if you’ve just gotten married, you could see furniture or baby products.
4. Your work status and income
Again, businesses want to target people who are employed, and your income level will dictate the ads you see.
5. Your education levels
We know a higher income is often correlated with a higher level of education, and it’s another piece of information that Google and Facebook in particular likely have about you.
6. Your ethnicity, religious and political beliefs
These details about you will also be tracked, particularly by Facebook. While Google likely knows as well, it claims it doesn’t show “personalised ads based on sensitive categories, such as race, religion, sexual orientation, or health”.
7. Facial recognition data
Unlock your iPhone with your face?
Apple is at least partially responsible for the growth of face identification as a biometric security solution, joining the likes of casinos which track the movements of people coming in and out as well as China, who have attracted controversy for its sophisticated public surveillance systems.
Facebook and Microsoft collect this data, too.
8. Financial and banking information
Given that this has to do with your money, be particularly careful with this – there are no shortage of scammers who want to take advantage of this information. We already know that scammers can drain your bank account just by knowing your mobile number.
Unsurprisingly, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft know this information, but so can Twitter and Facebook if you’ve made purchases through the platform.
9. Your IP address
Any device connected to the internet will be assigned a unique IP address, and so long as your IP address is know, your online activities can be tracked. Worse case scenario, your device could be hacked.
All the six major tech players collect this data.
10. Your communications
You already know that Facebook Messenger holds and archives your messages, and since you’ll be making calls through your Apple devices, Skype (which is owned by Microsoft), and now through Facebook as well, metadata about your calls – such as the time of your calls – are also stored.
11. Your calendar
Do you use Google Calendar?
Even though it’s over, the data about the event is still kept and therefore companies can learn how busy you are, how organised you are and how you spend your time.
12. Your search history
Each time you search something on a search engine, the query is stored – needless to say, your search history says a lot about what you’re interested in.
13. Your media consumption
Google owns Youtube, so what you watch is being tracked.
But it’s not just videos: the major tech platforms can also know the music you listen to, the games you play and the books you read.
14. Your browser history
Yes – even if you delete it, Google remembers.
It’s got all the data around it, so it’s know where you’ve been, how long you’ve been there and the usual time of day you’re on it, so it gets a sense of your habits.
15. Your social media behaviour
Don’t be surprised that what you like, comment on, the pages and profiles you follow, and the people you block are all stored in your account’s history.
16. Your purchase history
Online stores keep records of what you’ve purchased and how much you’ve spent.
The data then translates into products that will be advertised at you that you’ll be likely to gravitate towards.
17. Fitness and health data
Especially if you’ve got a fitness tracker, there’s no question that this data is being stored, which can say a lot about your exercise habits, how health conscious you are and how consistent you are with your fitness regime.
18. The ads you click on
Naturally, companies will want to know if their ads are being clicked on, so they’ll be tracking ads and the ad copy and format that encouraged clicks.
19. Posts you hide from your Facebook feed
Social media giants don’t just care about what you like to look at – they care about what you don’t like, too.
So if a page tends to get blocked by a large amount of people, it’s a red flag.
20. The devices you use
Tech companies care about what devices you use to consume, because it influences the media format they deliver their services on.
For example, because we spend so much time on our phones now, content and ads are being optimised to be mobile-friendly.
21. Voice data
If you’re using Amazon Alexa or Microsoft’s Cortana, don’t be surprised that your voice data is being stored.
Here’s all that and more in an infographic by Visual Capitalist, which sources information from Security Baron:
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