I think my phone is listening to me, but I can't prove it. Have you ever talked to your friends about a very specific topic, such as going on a caravan trip, and after that, you started seeing caravan rental ads everywhere: digital newspapers, instagram, Youtube, etc.? It has happened to me and more than once.
How can we know the use of our data?
Users have only one way to know how our data is used: reading the privacy policy of all the websites we visit and, furthermore, believe what it says on it. It's an act of faith.
Another alternative is take an active part in the privacy of your device. That is, carefully evaluate, application by application, the permissions granted (it may happen that you have agreed to be recorded). This second option will not allow you to directly know how your data is used, but it will allow you to know the control you have over it. Again, for a standard user, doing this is a leap of faith. If a company wants to break the rules, it does so, whether or not you have accepted its privacy policy.
Navigate with caution
Regardless of this, when browsing the Internet you should always do so with caution, knowing that a website is not an isolated element but in one way or another it is related to any other. Metaphorically, browsing the Internet is like shopping in a department store. You can buy shoes on floor 2 and pillows on floor 6, but you are buying from the same company and everything remains in your purchase history.
Something similar happens on the Internet, everything remains in the browsing history. All of our online activity is exposed, recorded and, for the most part, sold to the different purchasing agents involved in the process of managing advertising spaces or in the behavioral analysis of users. All this is possible thanks to our friends cookies, which we will talk about another time.
However, you can learn more about it in the latest update of the Guide on the use of cookies published by the Spanish Data Protection Agency.
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