Web Sites Are Gathering Our Confidential Data. How You Can to Bypass This?
But most of those services consider processing your confidential data online. All the resources online are obliged to notify you about the reality that they have received your private data and the duration of processing it. Many of them cover that point. That's why we at Jammer-Store Inc. have prepared this short guide on how websites gather and process your personal information.
Complicated patterns in saving personal data
First of all, if we skip the most complicated and sophisticated patterns, websites have 2 options for getting your personal information:
- When you try to reach a website, the application automatically sends your address on the web, location, data on the operating system, and screen resolution to a server.
- When you fill in and submit any form on the site, it is saved on the server.
The server needs to know your IP address to know where he must send the page, and the details about the OS, browser and screen resolution are necessary to ensure that the web page will be displayed correctly on your device. Also, the server gets the information about from which page you came. Any website saves some details about you, but it may be stored not only on the server but also on your device. In that case, cookies are used.
A cookie is a small portion of text data stored on your local machine. A server creates cookies, and you accept cookies from various websites while surfing the net. They may contain information you have entered into multiple web forms and login/password combinations for the sites you are currently logged in. All the activity with cookies is in the background mode, but you can set up your browser to ask for permissions for all those operations.
Using cookies
We also must mention that a leader in gathering personal information is Google Inc. It was in 2009 when Google provided a new «personalized» or adaptive search algorithm. Now, Google collects info about your last requests, browsing history, and location to offer you the best results and the links you will probably click. It led to the fact that if two different people on two other devices google similar things, they will get different results.
Various websites use cookies to remember your activity on the server. Also, that information may be used by advertisers to provide you with the most relevant ads. If you are willing to ensure maximum anonymity while surfing the web, you should try using free proxy servers or VPNs. These are somewhat effective measures, thanks to which no one will find your physical location.
We should also mention that such personal information gathering may be extremely dangerous for smartphone and mobile Internet users. The main reason is that we store many unique and sometimes susceptible information in our mobile gadgets. The information we discussed includes text messages, a contact list, all the files, and the data from our GPS module. It is dangerous because many sites can locate us using an IP address that can be easily replaced with a proxy and using GPS data and cell tower triangulation.
Recently we have written about how Verizon Wireless started to sell customer information to significant advertisers. The company has passed them the info about your location, gender, and age, so advertisers can now provide you with relevant ads based on your site. While that information was personalized, that fact showed us that significant cell service carriers could easily track us down.
Using jamming devices
You should know that such tracking using browser data or data provided by satellite navigation may be really useful for advertisers and law enforcement. It will make it easier to fight cyber crimes or mobile fraud. On the other hand, it may help various criminals as well. As we've already mentioned, it is possible to locate you with GPS and cell network data. In that case, your approximate coordinates are calculated between the three closest cell towers. The only way to stop that – is to use a combined GSM/GPS jamming device. That signal blocker will hide you from any track.
Internet is not a safe place, it has its hidden dangers and menaces, but we hope that our small guide will help you to avoid at least some of them!
