When the internet first began to flourish, data such as how fast a user types and the types of spelling errors they make were viewed as a useless surplus of information, but nowadays that kind of information is valuable and is used to create user models like the look-alike models we discuss below. In this section, we cover a few important internet data collection methods that are prevalent today.

There are many reasons why you should protect your data. Most of us in our lifetimes will experience at least one instance of hacking into one of our accounts - whether it’s banking information, an email account, or social media profile. In this section we have broken down privacy into two categories - basic and advanced. Basic privacy protocols are things everyone should be doing. More advanced protocols are for those who are interested in being more anonymous than the average user. It’s important to note that the more privacy protocols you enact, the less convenient it might be to use various apps, websites, and devices. The balance between privacy and convenience is something that everyone must decide for themselves.

Social media has been around in various forms since the dawn of the internet. First it was blogs, then MySpace, and now Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and countless others. There are wonderful aspects to social media. We can connect to our loved ones around the world and stay updated on what and how they’re doing. We can meet other like minded people who have the same interests as us. Nowadays, a lot of people use it for news and entertainment. Social media is not as innocuous as it may seem on the surface, though, and we must protect ourselves from the dangers of it the best we can.

Edward Snowden is a crucial figure to know in regards to our personal privacy. In 2013, he blew the whistle on the unorthodox and invasive procedures performed by the CIA during his employment with them. These procedures and allowances were highly intrusive to the personal privacy of all Americans. After the September 11th attacks in 2001, Congress was quick to pass The Patriot Act which allowed them to essentially spy on us without much or any evidence at all. It’s safe to say most of us were under the impression that in order for government agencies to access things like our personal phone calls, proper protocol involving judicial approval must be followed. Unfortunately, under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, the government was collecting information on the phone calls of millions of Americans without the need for due process. This section of the Patriot Act was ruled unconstitutional in 2015 thanks to Snowden’s actions, but unrestricted access to our personal information by our own government is still under threat.

Shoshana Zuboff is a social psychologist and professor at Harvard Business School in Boston, Massachusetts. She is the author of the book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power published in 2019. In her book, she details the concept of “surveillance capitalism” where users and their data are a commodity that is bought and sold by corporations, essentially using us as currency rather than consumers. Surveillance capitalism occurs at a level we don’t have access to. For example, the New York Times published an article about how Target was able to predict that a teenage girl was pregnant by tracking her behavior online and subsequently sent her advertisements for baby related items. This specific event has been disputed, but the concept is frighteningly real.