What are companies doing with the “data” that they steal when going on certain sites?

Question

I hear a lot of talk about companies getting hold of lots of data and information from your devices when you go onto certain websites, but what does that actually mean? What information are they getting and how is this bad for me and good for them?

In: 8

Answer 1

It’s not usually bad for you in that it will cause you direct harm, it’s just generally an invasive mechanism that is pulling information without your awareness or consent.

As to what data they get, it really depends on what it going on. Generally they are gathering information on what device you are using, what web browser, and what website/content you are looking at. In addition they can also find out what other websites you’ve been too, your physical location to varying accuracy (very general using geo-ip to exact with gps if you enabled the permission). You don’t even need to ever visit a website directly for the company to track your browsing habits*.

Some extremely invasive data gathering can get more sensitive info, think about every message you may have sent over something like facebook. Facebook doesn’t have to keep those messages to gather data from them. A pattern match algorithm can determine topics/interests/demographics/etc. and store those without needing to save the actual conversation. Facebook and its software is actually really bad about system invasion for data gathering.

*Those little facebook/twitter/etc. buttons on webpages/news articles/shopping sites that are supposed to allow you to share the *thing* on your feed with your friends is one way they do it. That little facebook symbol isn’t stored on say [amazon.com](https://amazon.com)’s web site. It’s stored on facebook’s. So when your browser opens up the page for a blender listing, it reaches out to facebook’s server for that little symbol using an encoded link. That code tell’s facebook’s server exactly what page you are visiting and your browser supplies it’s information as part of the standard request. This allows facebook (and others) to track your browsing without you ever visiting their website.