The Association for Consumer Information warns against digital data trading
It is well known that Google, Facebook and Amazon collect a lot of data about us. But these companies are just the tip of the iceberg and only a small part of what's actually happening in the world of digital data businesses.
In the background, countless companies are working to record our lives and examine us down to the most intimate corners of our personality.
Who are these companies?
What is their business model?
How do you work?
The Association for Consumer Information investigated these questions. The full report appeared in the February issue of KONSUMENT on January 25th and on www.consumer.at.
Hardly anyone can completely escape the data collection frenzy of the companies that specialize in it. To do this, you would probably have to do without smartphones and the Internet.
A certain level of espionage activity on the Internet cannot therefore be prevented. Nevertheless, it doesn't hurt to know that a lot of money is being made with our data.
An example of this is Oracle. The company has dossiers on over three billion people. This valuable information is the basis for business contacts with 430,000 companies worldwide in 175 countries.
The group obtains the information from millions of websites, from Facebook, from thousands of trading groups, from credit reporting agencies and other data traders. Oracle evaluates 700 million entries from social media channels alone – in one day!
The site operators receive valuable information about this, e.g. B. which advertising target group the test person belongs to. Competitions or personality tests are mainly there to collect data - and not to make the participants happy. A more careful approach to publishing information includes considering using alternatives to the well-known search engines or messenger services. There are definitely providers who forego tracking - and do not scan the consumer from start to finish and resell this information.
So anyone who is concerned about leaving fewer traces and thus information on the internet should, for example, For example, you can use postings and likes a little more sparingly and never take part in tests that reveal “who or what type of career you are”.
Notes:
1) This content reflects the current state of affairs at the time of publication. The reproduction of individual images, screenshots, embeds or video sequences serves to discuss the topic. 2) Individual contributions were created through the use of machine assistance and were carefully checked by the Mimikama editorial team before publication. ( Reason )