By Kim Key
The less data companies collect about you, the less they can share, sell, or lose in a breach. Start protecting your privacy with these simple steps.
Your data is worth a lot to advertisers, criminals, and companies of all kinds. That’s why you should care about where your information goes and what companies do with it. The best way to stop corporations from copying your phone’s contact list or checking out the contents of your camera roll is to limit access to your devices. This usually means downloading fewer invasive apps and blocking other data requests when companies and their apps ask for them. Here are some suggestions to help you lock down your devices, prevent data collection, and protect your privacy.
1. Check What Companies Collect About You
You can find out what kinds of data an app siphons from your phone or a website takes from your browser by browsing the company’s privacy policy. Earlier this year, I wrote about TikTok’s drastic changes to its US privacy policy and offered tips for quickly browsing policies. Here’s a short summary: Scroll down to the Data Collection section of the privacy policy and note what kinds of data the app or service collects and how the company stores and uses that information. You can also check any app’s privacy reports on the Android and iOS app stores. Keep an eye on your inbox, too. Companies email customers about policy changes and security incidents all the time, and they rely on you ignoring them.
2. Say No to Tracking Whenever You Can
Consider using your pull as a customer to push back on company data collection and usage policies that don’t align with your wants and needs. One way to do this is to always decline tracking cookies on websites. Think of a tracking cookie like an Airtag for your browser. The cookies follow you around the web for a certain period of time, sometimes indefinitely, and allow companies to keep an eye on your online activities even after you’ve exited the website. Most sites allow you to opt-out of tracking, but you may need to click through a few pop-up menus to do so. If you don’t want to go to the trouble, let an ad-blocking browser extension do it for you. Of the services I’ve tested, Adblock (premium version), Ghostery, and uBlock Origin offer settings that let you automatically decline consent pop-ups on websites.
You’ll want to opt out of AI training wherever you can, too. Many companies are incorporating generative AI tools into their services, and in some cases, such as LinkedIn, they are training their AI models on customer data. If you don’t want LinkedIn to scrape your future posts for AI training, visit the Settings menu and choose Data Privacy > Data for Generative AI Improvement.
3. Don’t Hand Over Your Real Information
Lie online whenever you can. Don’t give out your real information when filling out web forms. I’m not recommending you do this when communicating with government agencies or your bank, but yes, go ahead and lie to the cooking website that wants your birthday, full name, phone number, and physical address in exchange for a chili recipe.
(Credit: Cricut/PCMag)
If you can’t figure out why an app or website needs the information they’re harvesting from you, giving them your real data is not a good idea. In many cases, most of the information requested on a company’s web form is not required, so you can get away with leaving out important details about yourself. You can also choose not to accept cookies on many websites and deny application data requests without harming your user experience.
4. Delete Your Personal Information From the Web
In addition to lying online whenever you can, I also recommend removing information about yourself from the public web. To demonstrate why, let’s do a quick exercise: Open your favourite search engine in a new browser window. Type in your full name, along with one other fact about you, like your job title or the city where you live. The search results will probably be shockingly accurate, even though you (presumably) aren’t a famous person. When you’re done, come back to the comment section under this article, and tell me how many data broker websites have some information about you.
To remove yourself from these websites (and subsequently cut back on spam calls and scammy text messages), use a personal data removal service. These services will appeal to the data brokers on your behalf and get your name, address, phone number, and related relatives and online accounts removed from search results and data broker sites. You can save money by asking the data brokers to remove your information directly, but it’s a time-consuming process, and when your data is lost in yet another corporate data breach, you’ll need to go through the process all over again. A perk of using a personal data removal service is that most services constantly monitor data broker sites for your information and request its deletion on your behalf, without any input from you.
5. Turn On Multi-Factor Authentication
(Credit: 2FAS/LastPass/Kim Key)You can start protecting your data more effectively by enabling multi-factor authentication (MFA) for all the apps and websites you visit regularly. There are plenty of authenticator apps you can use with your mobile devices, or you could carry a hardware security key on your keychain. Entering passcodes is an extra step in the login process, but think of it as another barrier around your valuable data, designed to keep malicious individuals out of your accounts.
6. Store Your Passwords Securely
Similarly, you should consider using the password manager on your device (either Apple Passwords or Google Password Manager) or a password management app to keep track of passkeys and passwords for your online accounts. A good password manager can streamline your login process by filling in your passwords. Some, such as Enpass, even let you choose where to store your data. Taking control of how and where your data is stored by keeping it in your own secure cloud storage or locally on your computer keeps you from becoming a victim of a company’s vulnerabilities.
Don’t Make It Easy to Track You
Security snafus and data breaches at companies get fewer headlines these days, but that doesn’t mean the fallout from your leaked data is nothing to worry about. Scammers spin up social engineering schemes using your private information, hackers can get into your unsecured accounts, and companies can train AI using the images, videos, and other data about you floating around online.
Fed up with data collection? Check out our guide to completely disappearing online. And if you’re not quite ready to relinquish your internet presence, head over to our list of the best apps for online privacy.
Feature image credit: PCMag; Getty Images
By Kim Key
Senior Writer, Security. Read full bio