We live in a digital age. Today, digital identities are becoming as important as our real-world identities. For every real-world activity, there is now a virtual counterpart, so you can do these activities anywhere - from shopping to ordering food and paying bills. But performing all these tasks online comes at a price. Not only is all your data tracked and stored by the websites you access to perform these activities, but it’s also up for sale on the internet by data broker companies. This is one of the biggest challenges to the digital safety of internet users - which includes practically all of us now.
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We live in a digital age. Today, digital identities are becoming as important as our real-world identities. For every real-world activity, there is now a virtual counterpart, so you can do these activities anywhere - from shopping to ordering food and paying bills. But performing all these tasks online comes at a price. Not only is all your data tracked and stored by the websites you access to perform these activities, but it’s also up for sale on the internet by data broker companies. This is one of the biggest challenges to the digital safety of internet users - which includes practically all of us now.
Data broker companies store your personal information, such as your name, sex, date of birth, marital status, shopping habits, and income, among other things. This personal information is then sold to anyone willing to pay the price for it. Personal data of up to 11 lakh people are available for as less as ₹10,000 to ₹12,0000. This data is collected via cookies, apps, social media, credit card companies and other online payment systems. These companies collect data from various sources to fill in the gaps to create a digital blueprint of your personality.
Unfortunately, while cookies are supposed to improve your digital experience, they also track your online activity to collect the information you might not be comfortable sharing with online corporations hungry for your data.
Most search engines like Google track all your information, like your location, search history, and other information and share it with third parties. To prevent this from happening, you can use private search engines that do not share your data with third parties.
Using a Virtual Private Network saves you from the invasion of data from your Internet Service Providers that often share your search history with data broker firms. Using a VPN safeguards your data from the prying eyes of corporations looking to steal your data and sell it further to big businesses.
You can contact data broker firms and get your personal information deleted from their database. However, this personal information exists in the database of various data broker firms, so tracking all these firms and getting your data deleted from all these databases can be a challenge.
In order to protect your personal chats from being read by corporations, use applications
like Cove Identity that offer military-grade encryption, which ensures that even the application itself does not have access to your personal chats.
Avoid oversharing information on social media. Your location check-ins, status updates and photographs are all sources of information for corporations that are trying to create a digital footprint of your personality. Practising constraint while posting on social media can go a long way in ensuring that your personal information isn’t doing the rounds on digital databases.
Storing your documents on the cloud can be risky, considering that most cloud storage systems have access to your personal documents like bank documents, birth certificates, etc., which data broker firms can, in turn, access. Cove Identity offers military-grade encryption that ensures your personal documents are stored securely and can’t be stolen.
You can also pay private companies to protect your personal data from data broker firms. These firms safeguard your personal data by charging a nominal fee.
However, nothing beats awareness when it comes to digital safety. Always stay abreast of your national digital security and data protection laws, their regulations and your digital rights. Even though it is almost impossible to surf the internet without leaving some kind of a trace behind for data brokers to collect, vigilance can still go a long way in protecting your personal data.
Cove Identity is your personal ultra-secure digital locker. Get maximum control over your data with minimal effort.
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