Here’s How Much Data Companies Will Get From You on Cyber Monday
If you’re shocked to learn that the Internet isn’t the best place when it comes to your privacy, welcome to your first day online. Companies track everything you do while browsing the web, sometimes down to your individual keystrokes and mouse clicks, and absorb as much of your personal information as they can get their hands on. As you shop this Cyber Monday and throughout the 2022 holiday season, know that you’re not just giving away your hard-earned dollars to retailers, you’re also giving away your data.
The problem with online shopping is that there are so many points where you can lose your data. There are shops themselves that collect as much as they can while you browse their sites. In addition, there are third-party trackers that follow you from site to site, creating a profile of your browsing habits. In addition, there are third-party services like Honey that help you improve your shopping experience or save you money with even more privacy and personal information.
Trackers report your activity wherever you are online
After visiting Macy’s website , Safari’s privacy report says it stopped 39 trackers from compiling my profile: a whole host of creepy names like “tiqcdn.com” and “xg4ken.com” along with familiar faces like Facebook. Yahoo and Twitter. Six different Google trackers are trying to follow me, including “google-analytics.com”, “google.com”, “googleadservices.com”, “googlesyndication.com”, “googletagmanager.com” and “googletagservices.com”. ( Don’t be mean , my ass.)
What do these trackers want to know about me? All. Your online activity is invaluable to retailers and advertisers alike. Why not? Here’s an opportunity to see how you react to any retail situation. Trackers can see that you clicked on one shirt and not the other, that you chose the pink option instead of the brown one, or that you left with nothing when the items you wanted weren’t included in the sale.
That’s why profiling is such a big business. It is not enough to know how a random shopper behaves on one retail site. If they can link this information to you , a 30-year-old New Yorker working in finance who loves stylish clothes, they can better target you with ads.
It happens all year round, from Christmas to mid-July. But companies know you’ll be shopping a lot ahead of Cyber Monday and beyond. This is not only a great opportunity to sell you something, but also an opportunity to collect as much data as possible about you while they are doing it.
Think about how much data you’re willing to give companies when making purchases. Depending on the store, you can include your name, shipping address, email address, phone number, age, and of course payment information. This is already a lot to share with the company, but most of it is needed to facilitate the transaction. What isn’t necessary is sharing this data with a lot of third parties, which is what shops like Macy’s do . They also use the aforementioned trackers to collect data that they otherwise might not get.
Third party services like Rakuten steal your data too.
But you don’t just buy things in the stores themselves. We often use other services to improve the shopping experience. Take Rakuten for example. You can use these services every time you make a purchase, but they become especially relevant during the holiday sales. While you can earn a few percentage points throughout the year, the Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals are just crazy . Rakuten is touting up to 20% cash back this year, pushing consumers to take advantage of these retroactive savings.
There is no obvious advantage to using Rakuten. You choose to buy something through their affiliate link and the advertised savings are assigned to your account. Once you earn enough money, Rakuten will send it to you as a check. But Rakuten keeps track of as much data as you do. In accordance with its privacy policy, Rakuten collects all personal information that you provide to them (such as your name and email address), your IP address, your device and its operating system, payment information, and online activities (including URLs you are visiting).
But it also stores more personal data, including your gender, age, household income, whether you’ve considered purchasing anything in the past, your interaction with their coupons (including views and clicks), geolocation, inferences about who you are, and , perhaps most surprisingly, the mailbox details if you created your account using Google Sign-in.
Worse still, you probably agreed to allow Rakuten to sell that data. If you want to prevent this, you need to go to your account privacy settings and opt out.
I’m picking on Rakuten because despite the obvious data leaks, I’m still using their services (this year’s cashback deal is really good). But other services you can use this Cyber Monday are also tracking you. If you split your payments with something like Afterpay , they also collect similar data. You can read the privacy policy for each retail website or third party service you use and you will likely find similar data collection statements. None of these companies want you to shop anonymously.
What can you do to maintain your privacy when shopping?
Again, this is all part of the nature of the Internet. If you don’t take serious steps to prevent this when you’re online, you’re at risk and you simply can’t prevent all of your data from being leaked while shopping online. But there are steps you can take to help keep companies out of your business as much as possible.
To get started, use a browser with good privacy settings out of the box. Safari is a solid option for blocking trackers that you encounter while shopping, as well as on other websites. iCloud Private Relay hides your IP address from websites so they can’t steal your data even if they ask for it in their privacy policy. If you don’t have a Mac or don’t like Safari, there are plenty of great alternatives out there, like Firefox and Brave, as well as some options you’ve probably never heard of . If you really want to boost your online privacy, try a VPN that will hide identifying data like your location, IP address, and browsing data from websites and trackers.
If you make purchases through the applications of companies or services on your phone, there are also features to prevent tracking. On your iPhone, you can go to Settings > Privacy & Security > Tracking and make sure “Allow apps to ask you to be tracked” is turned off. Thus, shopping apps will not be able to track your activity in other apps and websites on your phone. On Android, a similar feature can be found using the DuckDuckGo app .
To prevent third parties from gaining access to your email address, use the “Hide my email” service instead. These services provide websites and businesses with unique email, which is then forwarded to your primary mailbox. This way, no one will ever see your real email, but you will still receive all the important messages. Apple has it built into iCloud+ , and DuckDuckGo has its own version too .
In general, try to limit the amount of data you offer to companies. Use encrypted payment methods such as Apple Pay when offered and don’t fill out forms marked “optional”. It’s also a good idea to go into the privacy settings of any site you have an account on. Remember to stop selling your data if it’s available, and shut up any other weird privacy leaks that might come up. You’d be surprised how careless some of these services are with your data.
Staying private online takes a lot of effort. It’s much easier to use the default settings and allow businesses and trackers access to all your data when you buy gifts. But with a little time and effort, you can slow down the spread of personal information online and get back to what the holidays really are: spending every last penny.