Tech giants are tracking your each and every movement online
footprint
/ˈfʊtprɪnt/
nounplural noun: footprints
Google just figured out that I was searching for footprints and now they can predict what am I gonna do by searching it. They also consider the other websites that I surf through and then come to a conclusion.
Yes, this method of tracking isn’t a secret anymore. Giants like Google and Facebook are tracking every internet footprint of yours to tell more about you. The fact that they know the truth about you than you know is very fascinating. They’ve unbelievable machine learning and artificially intelligent algorithms to predict your next step with high accuracy.
Re-marketing
In digital marketing, there’s a pretty famous term called re-marketing. The concept of re-marketing changed the way advertisers gain revenue and exposure. You might have seen some ads following you on Facebook and Instagram once you check that product on amazon. How do they track you?
Well, they have codes placed literally everywhere. Google’s ad codes are tracking user’s footprint and making a profile of every single unique user to understand their behavior. Facebook calls it pixel code which does something similar.
Ultimately the job of these codes is to create a profile about the user’s behavior and the things they’ve shown interest in. This can be put in two ways. Firstly, these methodologies will help giants like Google and Facebook to show ads that make sense to its users thereby providing value to advertisers and consumers as well. Secondly, a good majority of people don’t even know they’ve been tracked just because they ticked a checkbox saying “I agree to terms and conditions”.
Even the governments are putting hands into this and questioning the giants to put better regulations in place.
Cookies
Whenever you purchase a product on Amazon, there is a very high chance that someone like you is making money out of it. We know that Amazon is taking a cut and the seller is gaining profit, but apart from these people, there are common people who are called Amazon Associates.
The Amazon Associate program has helped Amazon gain serious momentum by helping users and affiliates as well. You might have recently noticed that a prompt showing up on websites asking you to confirm that you accept the cookies working behind a particular website.
The latest rules including the GDPR ones state that users should be informed about the cookies that have been placed on the website to track the user’s activities on a website. Amazon is strictly keeping cookies which helps them track the referral of a particular customer and reward the referral with a certain percentage of commission.
The concept has worked seriously well and an enormous amount of people are making a living out of it.
Trackers
Well, it’s a choice whether to provide data or not. You’ll get to see ads that make sense if you provide the data which is a good thing, you can also make use of such technologies available right now to track your customers to improve your business like Facebook or Amazon is doing.
But staying educated about these things is important. In fact, it should be mandatory and the governments should take a step forward to educate the mainstream audience. There are even browsers and search engines like DuckDuckGo fighting against the privacy violation of search engines like Google by providing solutions without tracking a single data point.
When you’re unaware of such, you don’t get a choice. But if you know how it works, you get a choice. Choose wisely.
