Your Personal Data Are Bought and Sold Online: How to Protect Yourself

Data brokers may possess your court and voting records, your address and phone number, and even your religious affiliation—all packaged and ready to be sold.

A woman holds a phone displaying several apps on Aug. 11, 2024. Oleksii Pydsosonnii/The Epoch Times

The smartphone that you rely on for browsing the internet, scheduling events, and organizing your day-to-day life logs a staggering amount of personal information, much of which is bought and sold online every single day.

“Our phones and the apps on them are subsidized by advertising information that exists in databases that advertisers can purchase, but anyone can purchase it, and the main thing that is obtainable is your location all of the time,” Joe Weil, a former Apple product manager, told The Epoch Times.

“Not just your location; the other people you co-locate with—so who you’re at home with, who you’re at work with, who you go to the gym with, who you might have another hobby with—all of this information is easily discernible to create what are called patterns of life.”

Weil said that the “details of our lives” are discernible first from our phones’ locations at any given time but also from what we look at on our phones: the sites we visit and the apps we download.

These are some of the key ways that your information is tracked and sold online, including through cookies and first-party and third-party tracking—and what you can do to protect yourself.

How Your Information Is Tracked

The websites you visit and the apps you download utilize different kinds of technology to collect your information—including where you are, who you communicate with, what you buy, what you search, and what your interests are.

Companies do this so they can save your preferences and information, often to tailor advertisements and search results to your interests, according to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Websites may also log your data to display personalized content, such as local weather patterns or stories and topics that interest you.

The sites may log analytics or “cookies” based on what pages you viewed during your visit, the amount of time you spend on the site, and the device or browser used to access the site, the FTC said.

Sometimes these companies may also get your information from dark web searches and data breaches, according to Usercentrics, a Germany-based consent management platform.

When you visit a website and it tracks your activity, that’s referred to as “first-party tracking.” When the website lets another company track you, that’s called “third-party tracking.”

Companies using third-party tracking can monitor your activity throughout most websites you visit, allowing advertisers to display targeted ads to you based on your preferences and online history, the FTC noted. Examples include seeing an ad about running shoes after visiting websites about running and fitness.

“Think of it like a three-dimensional topographical map of the relationships of the people in the country, where they go, and also what they do on their phones in many cases,” Weil said.

“So what’s happening is the app, even when it’s not being used, is sending off this information to a data harvester who is selling that to a data broker.

“Then, when you’re in the app, of course, it’s also essentially selling the location. It’s attempting to get location, even if you’ve said don’t give location. It has techniques called fingerprinting.”

How Your Information Is Bought and Sold

One way to see what information of yours has been bought and sold online is by Googling your name, according to consumer identity protection and privacy firm IDX.

You may see results from sites that know your age, address, phone number, homeownership status, tax records, court records, voting records, or even your religious affiliation.

These websites are called data brokers, and there are hundreds of them operating, scraping the internet for as much personal data on users as they can find before selling the data to advertisers and other companies.

The process is legal, and they use automated software to mine your information from credit bureaus, tax records, court records, telecommunication companies, social media platforms, departments of motor vehicles, and other public sources, according to IDX.

Data brokers also “often perform various kinds of aggregation, augmentation, analysis, and repackaging of data,” according to Usercentrics. Advertisers are not the only buyers, Usercentrics notes, as these tailored consumer profiles and data packages are sometimes even sold to law enforcement.

Other buyers of personal data packages include employers and recruiters, cybersecurity and fraud prevention firms, medical and pharmaceutical companies, banks and financial institutions, insurance providers, real estate and retail businesses, government agencies, and politicians and political campaigns.

“It’s very easy to discern, for example, if the government or the [Chinese Communist Party] or anyone wanted to find out, ‘Hey, show me the folks in the country who go to this particular [church] denomination’—that is immediately discernible,” Weil said. “'Show me the people who go to gun shops’—immediately discernible.”

What You Can Do

There are multiple ways you can protect your personal information online. If you already see some of your information in the hands of data brokers, one option is to request that each company remove your information individually.

However, this process involves completing forms, “verifying your identity, and sending emails, so [it] will cost you in time spent,” according to Usercentrics.

There are also dedicated removal services, typically accompanied by a fee, that can initiate the takedown process on your behalf. Some are unique to types of websites and services, but others advertise being able to remove personal information from dozens of data brokers.

Many of the services require subscriptions, as they will routinely monitor data brokers to send out takedown requests.

You can also take steps to prevent your information and personal data from getting into the hands of brokers in the first place. Whenever using web browsers and social media platforms, you can remove or limit the tracking they conduct on your internet activity. You can do the same with apps on Apple or Android phones, and you can decline to be tracked when new apps ask.

You can also browse the internet through a virtual private network or use search engines that focus on privacy and use little to no tracking.

The FTC also recommends regularly deleting your cookies, browser history, and search history on your computer to prevent ads based on your recent online activity. You may also be able to adjust the privacy settings in your browser to prevent websites from seeing where you go on the internet or your location entirely.

Options vary by browser, the FTC notes; some have a dedicated private browsing or “incognito” mode that deletes your browser history and cookies after you close the window and end the session.

Some phones may also allow you to opt out of personalized advertisements from the operating system’s maker, such as Apple or Google, often found in the “advertising” area in the device’s privacy settings.

Ad blockers are also available for blocking certain advertisements from appearing on your browser screen. Some even block trackers from logging data on you, the FTC said.