By Faith Leroux
Do you ever feel like your phone or computer is spying on you? You pop open YouTube, and seconds into the video, an ad about your favourite chocolate brand shows up out of the blue. And you feel a bit of a chill since you were just talking about your sudden craving for that exact brand and type of chocolate. Well, it turns out that it can be like that. Information you enter online and through apps can be used to collect data such as your interests, hobbies, and simple search queries. Google is notorious for this. Companies love giving you personalized ads, and to avoid them, you usually have to opt out through the settings.
What’s really creepy about ads, besides their relevance, is their timing. It almost feels like they come up right after you’ve had real conversations about their products. This can happen for various reasons, one being search queries. You could have talked to your family about a want or a craving, and they might have looked it up online to see if it was in stock, or you’ve subconsciously checked the topic through an app or browsed online. It can also happen on social media: your friends could spark a conversation about what they like after you’ve posted about it or clicked on a related link. Moreover, ad targeting can also be based on your connections, which means you might end up receiving ads because someone else in your inner circle has liked or interacted with a particular topic or product.
Your digital footprint might be more extensive than you think
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As an Android user, having a Google account is a must. Plus, if you’re using one of the many services that exist on Chromebooks, desktops, and even other smartphones, like Google Chrome, Sheets, or even YouTube, anything you do is tracked for ads unless you sign out of your account or tell Google to stop ad targeting.
But having all your information in one place, especially when apps love using the “Sign in with Google” tactic to link it, doesn’t help. That contributes to your digital footprint, which is what makes up your profile online. Advertisers can use that digital footprint to get more information about you, like your age, gender, and occupation. It can also learn about your interests, your product purchase history, and link you back to others you interact with. Marketing companies love to review this so they can show relevant ads. Google is only one example, but Apple, Meta, and Amazon are all major players in the advertising space. It’s just that Google is the most dominant, so much so that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has challenged Google’s monopoly over the ad technology stack.
Your online behaviour gets tracked, and your data is harvested
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Installed apps love tracking your behaviour. It is partly to help with ad targeting, and partly because algorithms need it to give you relevant suggestions. Apps with a For You feed, found in many social media apps like TikTok, use it to show videos and images based on artists, creators, or even people in a social group that a user interacts with. But sometimes when you opt out of personalized recommendations and ads, those feeds stop working correctly.At other times, apps might abuse their privileges and collect more information about your habits without your permission, claiming they’re doing so to improve the app. But that doesn’t mean they should always have extra diagnostic information, such as your device ID.
Another issue is on-device permissions. Some apps abuse access when it isn’t necessary to function. Why does a random utility app like a calculator or a flashlight require microphone permissions to function? On the other hand, enabling that makes sense for audio-detection settings in sleep-coaching apps. So the question becomes: Why are apps asking for more permissions than necessary? In truth, apps that don’t need it could be doing so to harvest and monetize your data through third-party agencies. And thanks to those privacy-invasive practices, some people become paranoid that their apps are eavesdropping or straight-up spying on contacts when they shouldn’t be.
