What does the Internet know about me, and what can I do with it?

Privacy on the Internet? It is hard to achieve. In fact, almost impossible. Just imagine that you are one ordinary user. You aren’t famous, and you don’t influence other people or judgments. On the Internet, you work, have fun, and communicate with friends. There are usually things that should not interest anyone.

Far from it! It does not matter who you are and what you are doing online. The Internet collects information about you. It tries to pick up all the possible details it can obtain. These are your IP address, browser cookies, the history of your searches, the pages you visited. Also, Google analyzes how long you stayed on the page, which materials attracted your attention, and which descriptions made you buy things. All these data are all of the highest value.

When you search for something on Google, it examines you, stores, and analyzes the data about you. As the AI algorithms become more advanced, Google makes better and more realistic conclusions. What does the Internet know about me? Every day, it knows more. And the goal is to know everything.

Why do they track our actions on the Web?

The primary goal of data collection is to understand you as a person. After that, they can sell you something. You might have noticed how Google and Facebook offer you frequent (and rather annoying ads). You don’t even need to search for the thing. It is enough to mention it in a personal conversation or even aloud when your smartphone is switched on.

It does not relate to the advertisements only. They annoy, but you can ignore them or hide them using the browser adblockers. Things to sell are only a part. The Internet can sell you ideas, images, and candidates. The more sophisticated the technologies are, the more data they collect and the better analysis they provide.

How to protect ourselves from being tracked?

No one likes being an object or monitoring and investigating. Thus, the fundamental marketing law of the need and supply is working. When people want to have some privacy online, there will be means to help them achieve their goals.

• The most efficient tool is using VPN – the virtual private network. Whenever you use it, the service establishes an encrypted channel between you and your target resource. First, your activities are invisible while you stay in that channel. It is impossible to track them. Second, VPN makes you anonymous. It hides your IP address and allows you to access the pages from a different IP. As a result, the trackers can’t identify you and correlate with those pieces of information collected. Such service providers as VeePN have achieved excellent results in protecting their customers. Besides, they ensure excellent quality of the Internet connection, so you can be safe and enjoy your web surfing.
• The Incognito mode in many modern browsers also helps. While it does not conceal your IP address, it deletes cookies and browsing history automatically at the end of every session. Thus, it won’t let the Internet trackers collect the cookies and analyze them. A combination of the Incognito mode and a VPN connection is a powerful tool that lets you stay almost invisible online.

The reality of our life is such that we can’t pass below the radars. There are too many necessary things, and they collect the information about us. There is not a working method to stay absolute private, unfortunately. You can forbid the Internet to track you only if you don’t use it at all. But we all depend on the Internet. Thus, we only can try to minimize the tracking. However, modern VPN services let us keep private to the best degree possible.