This article takes a look at how Silicon Valley technology companies track your activities across the web and use your phone to gather additional information about you. It also offers suggestions about what you can do stop it or block them. This article has 7 sections and makes the most sense if you read it in its entirety, but if you have a short attention span feel free to jump to the section you’re most interested in.
How Technology Companies Track You
Silicon Valley technology companies love to track their users behavior across the web. One of the ways they do this is with social media voting buttons or analytics tracking scripts. These trackers use tiny 1×1 "invisible" pixels or small JavaScripts that drop unique identifiers on your computer that they can use see which websites you visit and build a profile of your interests and likes. In most cases these are used to target you with advertising they think you will be interested in. The potential to use this tracking for nefarious purposes is very real, and unfortunately there are no laws protecting consumers. In this article we’re going to go over ways to block these scripts and limit Silicon Valley’s ability to track you.(Return to Top)
Why Using Phone Apps Is a Bad Idea
The single biggest preventative step you can take to limit the information being gathered about you is to not use any phone apps. This includes the Facebook App, Google App, YouTube App, Gmail App, Instagram App, Twitter App, Amazon App, and Reddit App. An App can track every phone call you make, look at every picture on your phone, look at every one of your contacts complete information, track every website you visit, track every place you go, and how long you’re there. You should only use a mobile browser on your phone, and only log into websites when you need to. Staying logged in gives these companies information you probably don’t want them to have. The best way to stay logged out and prevent yourself from being tracked is to delete your cookies regularly. An easy way to remember to do this is to delete them at a specific time every day, like when you wake up, after you check your email, before bed, or to set an alarm after dinner. If you’re unsure how to delete cookies on your phone use these links to learn more (Deleting cookies on an Android phone
) (Deleting cookies on an iPhone
)
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Disabling Location Services On Your Phone
The next biggest step you can take to limit technology companies ability to track you is to disable location services. Blocking location tracking is a little complicated but there are some helpful guides on how to do it listed below:
- How to Disable iPhone Location Tracking .
- How To Stop Google From Tracking Your Location .
- How to Turn Off Google Location Tracking .
Your goal is to only enable location services on apps that need it, like Google Maps, and you only want to give it access when you are using the app. There’s no reason Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, or Amazon need to where you are. If you use native phone apps, a VPN Service won’t protect you from revealing your location. Apps on your phone use your phone’s internal GPS coordinates to relay your location very accurately to within a few feet.(Return to Top)
How To Block Twitter Tracking
One of the ways Twitter tracks your activity across the web is with a cross site tracking script that's embedded in many of the social voting and sharing buttons you find on different websites. Fortunately, its fairly easy to block this script with a browser plugin:
- Twitter Disconnect Extension (Blocks Twitter tracking scripts).
- Disconnect Extension (Blocks multiple websites tracking scripts).
How To Block Facebook Tracking
One of the ways Facebook tracks your activity across the web is with a cross site tracking pixel that's embedded in many of the social voting and sharing buttons you find on different websites. Fortunately, its fairly easy to block using a browser plugin:
- Disconnect FaceBook Tracking Pixel Extension . (Blocks Facebook tracking scripts).
- Disconnect Extension (Blocks multiple websites tracking scripts).
How To Block Google Analytics Tracking
Some of the ways Google tracks your activity across the web is with a cross site tracking script that's embedded in many of the social voting and sharing buttons you find on different websites and with the Google Analytics tracking JavaScript. Fortunately, its fairly easy to block this script with a browser plugin:
- Block Google Analytics Tracking (Blocks Google tracking scripts).
- Disconnect Extension (Blocks multiple websites tracking scripts).
How To Pollute Your Google Search History
Google maintains a history of every search you've ever done, and every video you've ever watched on YouTube, every location you've ever visited with Google App on your smartphone, and every picture on your phone or computer you've ever given them access to. They use this information to build an advertising profile of your likes and dislikes. There is a growing body of circumstantial evidence that they are using this information to personalize your search results and to try to influence your opinion and try to make you more accepting of progressive liberal viewpoints. This is explained in the leaked Google video The Selfish Ledger
.
To prevent your search history from being used against you there are two strategies, avoid using all Google products, or pollute Google's data to the point to make it impossible to use against you. We think it's impossible to completely avoid Google they are too well integrated into modern society for that to really be possible. However polluting Google's data stream is something you can do with the Google TrackMeNot Extension
.
We suggest setting it to Avg Query Rate much higher than a human could ever search (our is set to 5 queries per minute). Use the RSS feed as it includes different current events into your queries making them look more natural. We also suggest using the "bomb", "porn", and "pornographie" lists, because it will give you plausible deniability for any searches law enforcement would be interested in. Lastly, we also suggest the keywords monitored by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), again the more disinformation in your search history the better.
(Editors note we aren't affiliated in any way with the extensions listed above, so if you want to be a dick and attack them that's all on you.)
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