What Do Advertisers Know About Me

Smarter Living | How to See What the Internet Knows About You (And How to Stop It)

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/03/smarter-living/how-to-see-what-the-internet-knows-about-you.html

How to See What the Internet Knows About You (And How to Stop It)

July 3, 2017

Welcome to the Smarter Living newsletter. Editor Tim Herrera emails readers once a week with tips and advice on living a better, more fulfilling life. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Monday morning.

My mom (Hi mom!) isn't exactly a tech expert. We have the stereotypical boomer parent/millennial child relationship. I help her update her OS and figure out her cable bill, she cautions me about sketchy hackers stealing my identity and warns me not to open strange email attachments.

"Just because you're paranoid," she likes to joke in her motherly way, "doesn't mean they aren't out to get you." I laugh then brush it off.

But mom, I'm here to say: You were right.

The relentlessly unyielding (but highly profitable) personalization of the products and services we use is getting deeper and creepier than ever. This type of data is incredibly valuable, we're producing a ton of it every day, and it's all being used to turn us into products. As one Facebook developer famously said: "The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads."

While we're at it, let's just go ahead and lock down your whole online presence, and look into some browser extensions that protect your privacy.

Be safe out there. They're watching.

What did I miss? How do you guard your online life? Email me at tim@nytimes.com or tweet me @timherrera and let me know!

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