The Hidden Cost of Convenience

As you wake up in the morning, your first instinct is to grab your weather app. After dismissing the pesky advertisement that pops up front and center, you check the forecast. You value the app for its localized hourly updates—and the best part? It’s completely free!

But have you thought about why it’s available at no charge? Check the app’s privacy settings. By agreeing to let it gather your data, you contribute to keeping the service free, which includes:

• The devices you connect with, including their IP and Media Access Control addresses.
• Data provided during sign-up, such as your name, email, and home address.
• Your preferences in the app, including your temperature unit choice.
• Interactions within the app, like the content you view and ads you click.
• Inferences drawn from these interactions.
• Your real-time location, which could involve ongoing tracking depending on your settings.
• Websites or applications you access after using the weather app.
• Information shared with advertising partners.
• Data collected by analytics firms that help improve the app.

Such data collection practices are commonplace. The company uses this information to tailor ads and content to you. Enhanced personalization often leads to increased revenue for the app owner, who may also distribute your data to external parties.

When browsing social media platforms like Instagram, the hidden cost remains your data. Numerous “free” mobile applications accumulate information about you as you use them.

As an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and a doctoral student in computer science, I focus on how software collects personal information. Your data allows companies to not only understand but also capitalize on your behavior.

It’s already recognized that social media and mobile applications harvest your information. Meta’s entire business model revolves around this practice. This company, which operates Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, boasts a valuation of $1.48 trillion, with nearly 98% of its revenue derived from ads utilizing user data from over 7 billion monthly users.

Grasping the Worth of Your Data

Before mobile apps and social media took over, businesses performed comprehensive demographic studies to analyze product performance and pinpoint the best sales zones. This data was instrumental in crafting broadly targeted advertising for billboards, print media, and television commercials.

Today, mobile applications and social media enable far more accurate data collection at a reduced cost. Via these channels, consumers willingly share personal information for convenience. In 2007, right after the rollout of targeted ads, Facebook generated over $153 million—three times more than the previous year. Over the last 17 years, this figure has expanded more than a thousandfold.

Techniques of Data Collection

Applications and social media giants collect your data in several ways. Meta exemplifies this, with its privacy policy listing five primary data collection methods:

Firstly, it gathers personal data you provide. Secondly, it observes your activities on its social media platforms. Thirdly, it monitors your interactions and the accounts you follow. Fourthly, it tracks the devices you use to access its services. Finally, it collects insights from your activity with apps affiliated with its networks. Other applications and social media platforms follow similar protocols.

Your Digital Footprint

When signing up for an app or social media service, you tend to share various personal details, such as your age, birth date, gender identity, location, and employment details. Initially, profile data served as Facebook’s main revenue stream. This information is crucial for advertisers aiming at particular demographics, covering aspects like age, gender, and location.

Once you engage with an app or platform, the company collects insights regarding your usage patterns. Social media enhances engagement by encouraging interactions with others’ posts via likes, comments, or shares. Meanwhile, the company gathers data on the content you consume and your communication styles with others.

Advertisers become aware of the duration for which you linger on a Facebook post or a particular TikTok video. This activity data offers clues about your interests. Advanced algorithms can swiftly identify patterns and customize content to deliver targeted ads, sponsored posts, or relevant general content.

Device Tracking and App Data

Companies can identify the devices you’re using—be it smartphones, tablets, or computers—when you access their services. This reveals details about your brand preferences, the age of your devices, and their estimated advertising value.

Since mobile devices typically accompany you everywhere, they collect data regarding your locations, routines, and the individuals nearby. In August 2022, the Federal Trade Commission criticized Kochava Inc. for selling geolocation data, particularly related to individuals seeking abortions after the Roe v. Wade ruling was overturned. The FTC claimed that these individuals were often unaware their movements were being tracked, suggesting the data could pinpoint specific homes.

Kochava has refuted the FTC’s allegations.

Apps can access any permissions you grant on your mobile devices, which may encompass your location, contacts, or photos stored in your gallery.

For instance, if you allow an app to determine your location while it’s active, that app can access your whereabouts whenever it operates. Allowing access to your contacts could provide an app with visibility into the names, numbers, and emails of your acquaintances.

Data Across Applications

Companies can also accumulate information regarding your activities across various apps by acquiring data harvested from different platforms.

This is especially common among social media companies. Such practices allow them to serve ads based on your interests or recent searches in other applications. If you look for an item on Amazon and later see ads for it on Instagram, it’s likely because Amazon has shared that information with Instagram.

The efficiency of this integrated data collection has made targeted advertising so accurate that many users feel as though their devices are eavesdropping on their conversations.

Firms like Google, Meta, X, TikTok, and Snapchat can compile detailed user profiles using data gathered from all the apps and social media services you access. These profiles influence the ads and content you see, ensuring they align with your interests. They also sell these profiles to advertisers.

Research indicates that both Meta and Yandex, a Russian search engine, have bypassed mobile operating system privacy measures designed to protect users’ web-browsing data. Both embed code on their webpages that uses local IP addresses to transmit individual browsing histories—data intended to remain confidential—to mobile applications installed on those users’ devices, effectively compromising their anonymity. Yandex has employed this tracking since 2017, while Meta began its practices in September 2024, as per research findings.

Steps You Can Take

If you utilize apps that collect your data, such as those for navigation, fitness tracking, or social networking, your privacy may be at risk.

Unless you want to completely shun modern technology, several measures can lessen the accessibility of your sensitive information—at least partially.

Review the privacy policies of the applications and social media platforms you use. Although these documents may be lengthy and complex, they outline how companies gather, handle, store, and disseminate your data.

Assess a policy by determining whether it satisfactorily answers three crucial questions: what data does the app collect, how is this data collected, and for what purposes is it used? If you cannot confidently answer all three questions or if the responses discomfort you, consider abstaining from using the app until its data handling practices improve.

Limit unnecessary app permissions to decrease the amount of data you share.

Stay updated regarding the privacy settings provided by your applications and social media platforms—including any features that may alter your user experience based on your personal data or sharing practices.

These settings can afford you some control. It’s advisable to turn off options like “off-app activity” and “personalization.” “Off-app activity” allows an app to log which apps are installed on your device and your interactions with them. Personalization features enable apps to tailor ads and content based on your information.

Regularly assess and adjust these settings, as permissions can shift following app updates or phone software changes. Updates may introduce new features capable of harvesting your data, while phone enhancements might expand how apps collect information or introduce new privacy safeguards.

Consider utilizing private browsing modes or trusted VPN (Virtual Private Network) software when interacting with internet-connected apps and social media. Private browsers do not retain account details, thereby limiting the data collected. VPNs obscure your IP address, making it difficult for apps and platforms to determine your geographical location.

Lastly, evaluate whether you genuinely require every app present on your device. While engaging with social media, critically consider how much personal information you share—be it through liking and commenting on posts or posting life updates and location information.

This article forms part of a series on data privacy that delves into who collects your information, how it’s obtained, who buys and sells it, and what steps you can take in response to this reality.

Kassem Fawaz, Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Jack West, PhD Student in Computer Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.