Astonishingly, they discovered that a majority had leaked search terms to third parties, often advertisers.
“Often, websites would leak search terms via more than one [way].
This shows that most websites, more than eight in ten, leak your search terms.”
Teera Konakan / Getty Images
The report, however, doesn’t surpriseEsther Payne, privacy advocate, and community manager at theLibrecast Project.
“We are building our own virtual Panopticon,” suggested Payne.
“The Panoptic cell is our profile of all various bits of metadata pooled together into shadow profiles.
lemono / Getty Images
The more data points [are] added the more accurate targeted advertising gets.”
Education, she suggests, is an important part of protecting people’s privacy.
For starters, before you use any service, it’s best to search for information on them.
“The online landscape is constantly evolving,” said Payne.
“The less information that an individual puts up on the services, the better.”
“Consider giving up Google and Facebook services,” advised Payne.
“There are alternative email providers if you don’t know how to host your own email.
There are also alternatives to Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter.”
“Private information is reduced to data points to sell,” explained Payne.
This is the legacy of Web 2.0."
