The Hidden Cost of Convenience

As dawn breaks, you instinctively reach for your weather application. After quickly closing the frustrating pop-up ad, you dive into the daily forecast. You value this app for its location-specific, hourly updates—and the cherry on top? It doesn’t cost a dime!

But have you ever pondered why it’s free? Check out the privacy settings of the app. By allowing it to gather your data, you help maintain its free status, which includes:

• The devices you log in from, including their IP and Media Access Control addresses.
• Details given during signup, such as your name, email, and home address.
• Your preferences within the app, like the choice of Celsius versus Fahrenheit.
• Your interactions with the app, including content viewed and ads clicked.
• Conclusions drawn from your usage patterns.
• Your precise location at various times, which may involve ongoing tracking based on your preferences.
• Websites or apps you visit after using the weather app.
• Information shared with advertising partners.
• Insights compiled by analytics firms that help enhance the application.

This type of data collection is quite common. The company utilizes this information to tailor advertisements and content to users. Enhanced personalization results in increased revenue for the app owner, who may also trade your data with third parties.

You might also be scrolling through social media platforms like Instagram, where the hidden cost is the data you provide. Many “free” mobile applications accumulate details about you as you navigate them.

As an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and a doctoral student in computer science, I focus on how software collects personal data. Your information enables companies to analyze and leverage your behavior.

It’s no secret that social media and mobile applications harvest your information. Meta’s business model is centered around it. The company behind Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp has a value of $1.48 trillion, with nearly 98% of its revenue deriving from advertisements leveraging user data from over 7 billion monthly users.

Grasping the Worth of Your Data

Before mobile apps and social media reigned, companies conducted thorough demographic studies to assess product performance and identify the best sales venues. They utilized these data to create broadly aimed advertisements for billboards, print, and television.

Now, mobile apps and social media can collect accurate data at a fraction of the cost. Consumers readily trade personal details for convenience on these platforms. In 2007, shortly after targeted ads began, Facebook earned over $153 million—three times its revenue from the previous year. This figure has soared more than a thousandfold over the past 17 years.

Data Collection Techniques

Companies that operate apps and social media platforms gather your information through various methods. Meta exemplifies this, with its privacy policy outlining five data collection techniques:

First, it collects the personal details you share. Second, it observes the actions you take on its networks. Third, it tracks the users you connect with and the accounts you follow. Fourth, it notes the devices you use to access its platforms. Lastly, it aggregates data on your activities within apps connected to its networks. Many other apps and social platforms use comparable techniques.

Your Digital Trace

By signing up for an app or social media service, you share details such as your age, birthdate, gender identity, location, and employment with the company. Initially, advertising profile information was Facebook’s main source of income. This data is valuable for targeting specific demographics based on age, gender, and geographical location.

After you engage with an app or social platform, the company collects insights about your usage. Social media encourages engagement by prompting interactions with other users’ posts through likes, comments, or shares. Meanwhile, the company gains understanding regarding the types of content you consume and your communication habits.

Advertisers learn how long you linger over a Facebook post or a TikTok video. This behavioral data reveals your interests, allowing sophisticated algorithms to pinpoint nuances and adjust what you see, delivering sponsored content, targeted advertisements, or general topics.

Device Monitoring and App Data

Businesses can also identify the devices you use, including smartphones, tablets, and computers, to access their platforms. This information reveals your brand preferences, the age of your devices, and their estimated advertising value.

Since mobile devices are often with you, they record data on your location, activities, and the people nearby. In August 2022, the Federal Trade Commission criticized Kochava Inc. for selling geolocation data, especially concerning individuals who had abortions post-Roe v. Wade. The FTC noted these individuals frequently were unaware their movements were being tracked, alleging that the data could identify individual households.

Kochava has denied the FTC’s allegations.

Apps can access any permissions you grant them on your mobile devices, covering location, contacts, or even photo galleries.

For instance, if an app is allowed to track your location while active, it can access your whereabouts anytime it operates. Likewise, granting access to your contacts may give the app visibility into the names, phone numbers, and emails of your friends.

Cross-App Data

Companies often gather information about your activities across various apps by integrating data collected from other platforms.

Such practices are widespread among social media firms, allowing them to present ads based on your interests or recent searches in other applications. If you search for a product on Amazon and subsequently see an ad for it on Instagram, it’s likely because Amazon has shared that information with Instagram.

The efficiency of this combined data collection has made targeted advertising so accurate that many users feel as if their devices are eavesdropping on their conversations.

Companies like Google, Meta, X, TikTok, and Snapchat can create detailed user profiles using data compiled from all the apps and social media services you access. These profiles shape the advertisements and posts you receive, ensuring they resonate with your preferences. They also sell these profiles to advertisers.

Research has shown that Meta and Yandex, a Russian search engine, have circumvented privacy controls established by mobile operating systems to safeguard users’ web-browsing data. Both organizations embed code on their web pages that utilize local IP addresses to transmit individuals’ browsing histories—data meant to remain private—to mobile applications present on those users’ devices, effectively removing anonymity. Yandex has been employing this method since 2017, while Meta began its activities in September 2024, according to research findings.

Protective Steps You Can Take

If you use apps that gather any of your data, even those for navigation, fitness, or social interaction, your privacy could be at risk.

Unless you plan to shun all modern technology, there are several steps you can adopt to minimize access to your sensitive information.

Review the privacy policies of the apps and social platforms you use. While these documents can be lengthy and complex, they clarify how companies collect, process, store, and share your data.

Evaluate a policy by determining whether it answers three fundamental questions: what data does the app capture, how is the data collected, and what purposes does the data serve. If you can’t answer all three questions satisfactorily after reviewing the policy—or if the answers make you uneasy—consider holding off on using the app until its data practices improve.

Limit unnecessary app permissions to reduce the amount of data you share.

Stay updated on the privacy settings provided by the apps and social platforms in use, especially those settings impacting your experience based on your personal data or what information is shared.

These settings offer some degree of control. It’s wise to disable features like “off-app activity” and “personalization.” “Off-app activity” lets an app track which other apps you have and how you interact with them. Personalization settings allow apps to utilize your data to tailor advertisements and displayed content.

Regular reviews and adjustments of these settings are important as permissions may change with app updates or phone software upgrades. Updates might introduce new features that could collect more of your data, while upgrades can potentiate apps’ data collection capacities or offer enhanced privacy protections.

Consider utilizing private browsing settings or trusted VPN (Virtual Private Network) applications when using internet-connected services and social media. Private browsing does not retain account information, thus limiting data accumulation. VPNs substitute your IP address, making it harder for services and apps to determine your physical location.

Finally, assess the necessity of every app on your device. While engaging with social media, consider how much personal information you are revealing—whether through liking and commenting on posts, sharing updates, or posting location details.

This article forms part of a series on data privacy that scrutinizes who collects your data, the methods of collection, who purchases and sells it, and what measures you can undertake in reaction to this landscape.

Kassem Fawaz, Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Jack West, PhD Student in Computer Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.