Your Digital Life Under the Microscope
Have you ever checked the weather on your phone and later seen ads for raincoats? Well, that is not a coincidence at all: this is unapproved tracking that will follow you throughout the website. It is important to understand that we interact with the online world, and everything we do on any website contributes to the enormous market where data we produce is gathered, sorted, and sold. Although there are apparent benefits to advancing technology, there are also significant privacy concerns.
This blog specifically focuses on why personal data is now the new ‘currency’, reveals a snapshot of current privacy environment based on a real-life event, and provides suggestion for preserving personal digital rights. The conflict between invention and privacy is not just a technical issue but a societal one for all of us.
Understanding Digital Privacy in Context
Digital privacy is not only the ability to hide information, but rather the ability to control your information in society. Consider it as your freedom to choose how much of your life story, with whom, and when to share it. Traditionally, privacy violations were physical: someone spies on you or snoops through your mail. Currently, in most such websites, applications, and gadgets, tracking starts as soon as one visits them without their express permission. Such a transition has been fast and wide ranging.
The internet began as a relatively anonymous space where people could explore freely. But as online platforms grew, they discovered that user data was incredibly valuable. What started as basic website cookies has expanded into sophisticated tracking technologies that follow us across devices and platforms. Companies can now build detailed profiles of our behaviours and preferences, and even predict our future actions based on patterns in our data—a development early internet pioneers never anticipated (Becker, 2019).
We’ve grown accustomed to trading our data for conveniences: free email, navigation apps, social media, and personalised recommendations. This exchange represents the “privacy paradox”—we claim to value privacy while simultaneously giving it away for minor benefits. According to the UN (2018), the majority of global internet users express concern about their online privacy, yet fewer regularly read privacy policies. The scope is staggering: each day, over 5 billion internet searches occur worldwide, with each query potentially contributing to user profiles (Marr, 2018). Social media platforms collect data on billions of users globally, tracking not just what they post but what they view, click on, and how long they linger on content. The average person generates approximately 1.7 megabytes of data per second while online. As Zuboff (2019) argues in “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism,” this represents a fundamental shift where personal data becomes a commodity—raw material extracted from our lives to fuel prediction products sold in behavioural futures markets.
Figure 1: Share of Internet users worldwide concerned about online data privacy
The Privacy Paradox: We say we care about privacy, but our actions tell a different story. We readily exchange our personal data for small conveniences without fully understanding the long-term consequences of this trade.
The Current Privacy Landscape
Privacy concerns in today’s digital environment extend far beyond simple data collection. Apps and websites routinely gather sensitive information, including location data, browsing history, purchase records, and even biometric details (Jiang et al., 2024). Cross-device tracking allows companies to follow users across smartphones, laptops, and smart home devices, creating comprehensive behavioural profiles.
Data breaches have become alarmingly common, with millions of records exposed annually. The Internet of Things has expanded surveillance into our homes, with smart speakers, cameras, and appliances collecting data on our most intimate activities.
Common data collection touchpoints in your daily life include:
- Dating apps that know your romantic preferences
- Fitness trackers monitoring your physical health
- Payment apps tracking your spending habits
- Smart home devices recording activities in your private spaces
- Social media platforms analysing your social connections and interests
- Search engines building profiles based on your questions and concerns
Most of the internet relies on a business model fundamentally built on surveillance and data harvesting. Platform capitalism operates on what scholars call the “attention economy”—services appear free but are actually paid for with our personal information and attention. Companies like Google and Facebook derive over 80% of their revenue from targeted advertising based on user data (Johnston, 2024).
Surveillance Capitalism: An economic system built around the extraction and commodification of personal data. The more these companies know about users, the more effectively they can target advertisements, creating a cycle that continuously incentivises greater surveillance.
Algorithmic decision-making adds another layer of privacy concerns by using collected data to make consequential predictions about individuals. These algorithms now influence what information we see, what products we’re offered, and even our access to financial services, housing, and employment opportunities.
Research by privacy scholars demonstrates how contextual integrity—our expectation that information shared in one context won’t be used in another—is routinely violated in digital spaces (Poblet & Kolieb, 2018). When you tell a friend about pregnancy symptoms in a private message, you don’t expect to immediately see ads for baby products. Yet this type of context collapse happens constantly online.
Case Study – Big Tech’s Privacy Policy Changes
In February 2022, Meta (formerly Facebook) implemented significant privacy policy changes affecting its 2.8 billion global users. These updates expanded the company’s data collection capabilities across its family of apps while making the opt-out process more complex.
The revised policy consolidated user information from Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook into a unified profile, allowing for more comprehensive tracking across platforms. While Meta portrayed these changes as “enhancing user experience” and “providing better content,” digital rights analysts observed concerning trends in data collection (Protti, 2022).
One notable addition was the introduction of “inferred data”—information not directly provided by users but derived through algorithmic analysis of their behaviours. This includes emotional states, relationship status changes, and potential life events such as pregnancy or job hunting.
The new policy also extended the retention period for personal data from 90 days to three years after account deletion, significantly expanding the company’s data holdings and analytical capabilities.
When examined through digital rights principles, the policy violates what privacy scholars term “informational self-determination”—the right to control information about oneself (Roughton, 2021). The complexity of the 14,000-word document itself raises questions about meaningful consent, as it would take the average person over an hour to read completely.
Meta’s approach exemplifies what Zuboff (2019) calls the “dispossession cycle,” where companies gradually normalise increasingly invasive practices until they become standard. The strategy can be broken down into some major issues: information inundation, where privacy is shifted to the user, and a veiled free will whereby the company puts privacy-friendly options out of sight.
All these policies have a profound ramification to the ordinary users since they leave the doors open to better defined methods of manipulation. Meta may link data from one accumulating across the platforms in its arsenal to drive anything ranging from advertising to content curation with the potential to alter people’s views and actions.
What This Means For You: For instance, if you chat about any health matters on the WhatsApp platform, you can find corresponding advertisements on the Instagram platform without knowing why. Your chats, searches, and the time spent viewing certain content on its Meta platforms have become part of a unified profile in the eyes of the company. This integrated data can tell how content is personalised, products targeted towards the user, or how this data is shared with third parties.
The real-life effects transcend nagging advertisements, and they include discrimination in housing, employment, finance and insurance based on algorithmic profiling. Unfortunately, a variety of other problematic practices are that they are especially detrimental to marginalised users as algorithms merely replicate established prejudices by considering personal’ past behaviour as a future predictor.
Table 1: Timeline of Meta’s Privacy Policy Evolution
| 2004 | Facebook launches with minimal data collection |
| 2010 | Introduction of Like button across the web |
| 2014 | Acquisition of WhatsApp with privacy promises |
| 2018 | Cambridge Analytica scandal exposes data sharing issues |
| 2021 | Company rebrands as “Meta” |
| 2022 | New integrated privacy policy across all platforms |
What Can Be Done?
Protecting Yourself
Preventing the misuse of your personal data involves a complex process that begins at the personal level. First, you need to begin a personal privacy audit that will involve checking the settings in the various platforms, removing dormant accounts, and using more privacy-oriented apps. You should also consider using a VPN to ensure that his/her connection is encrypted and any tracking is prevented. Password managers assist in generating secure and unique passwords for activities requiring account access.
Specific steps you can take today:
- Limit app permissions, particularly location tracking, microphone, and camera access
- Regularly clear cookies and browsing history
- Use privacy-focused browsers that block trackers by default
- Be selective about the information you share on social media and in apps
- Check privacy settings after every app or operating system update
- Read privacy policies for services that handle sensitive information
Digital literacy is also important—you should be able to distinguish a phishing spam, know what cookies are, why applications require some of your personal data.
Policy and Regulation
Policy and regulatory frameworks provide essential systemic responses to privacy challenges. The GDPR established important precedents through requirements for explicit consent, data portability, and the right to be forgotten (Flew, 2021). Similar frameworks have emerged globally, sharing core principles: transparency about collection, purpose limitation, data minimisation, and accountability measures with penalties for violations.
Effective regulation must address power imbalances between individuals and data collectors by establishing collective data rights rather than placing the burden entirely on users. Regulatory approaches should consider context-specific privacy norms rather than applying one-size-fits-all standards across different domains of life.
The Role of Corporations
Corporate responsibility forms the third essential component of meaningful privacy protection. Businesses can implement ‘privacy by design’ mechanisms, which means that measures to protect privacy are built in right from the start. Data minimisation can be considered as an entirely new approach with regard to totalisation prevailing at present.
For consumers to effectively make their decisions, privacy policies should be clear and easy to understand. Preventive and early evaluations on impact can help avoid areas of risk that might be dangerous and costly if not checked. The acquired information must be used in the same context that it was provided and not used in a different way without the consent of the sharer.
These practices do not necessarily hinder innovation – companies that respect privacy are more likely to have a more sustainable business model and gain more trust from consumers, thus enjoying competitive advantages in the long-run.
Quick Privacy Checkup
- Update your privacy settings on your most-used platforms
- Install a reputable ad blocker and tracker blocker
- Review app permissions on your mobile devices
- Use different passwords for important accounts
- Consider which services you can replace with privacy-focused alternatives
Conclusion
Apparently, the fight for privacy is much more than the fight for information security; it is the fight for human beings’ freedom in general with the rise of the digital world. As we have seen, the current setting is replete with threats through surveillance, dataveillance, and algorithmic control pervasive in virtually every part of our lives. However, some positive changes can be made in society through people being cautious, encouragement of strict control, monitoring and corporate governance.
By being aware of the ways our information is harvested, by insisting on better safeguards, and by making informed decisions on how we interact with the digital world, we can contribute to a world in which technology benefits people, not at the cost of our privacy and control.
References
Becker, M. (2019). Privacy in the digital age: comparing and contrasting individual versus social approaches towards privacy. Ethics and Information Technology, 21. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-019-09508-z
Flew, T. (2021). Regulating Platforms. Cambridge: Polity.
Jiang, Y., Rezazadeh Baee, M. A., Simpson, L. R., Gauravaram, P., Pieprzyk, J., Zia, T., Zhao, Z., & Le, Z. (2024). Pervasive User Data Collection from Cyberspace: Privacy Concerns and Countermeasures. Cryptography, 8(1), 5. https://doi.org/10.3390/cryptography8010005
Johnston, M. (2024, June 29). How Does Facebook Make Money? Investopedia. https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/120114/how-does-facebook-fb-make-money.asp
Marr, B. (2018, May 21). How Much Data Do We Create Every Day? The Mind-Blowing Stats Everyone Should Read. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2018/05/21/how-much-data-do-we-create-every-day-the-mind-blowing-stats-everyone-should-read/
Poblet, M., & Kolieb, J. (2018). Responding to Human Rights Abuses in the Digital Era: New Tools, Old Challenges.
Protti, M. (2022, May 26). Here’s What You Need to Know About Our Updated Privacy Policy and Terms of Service. Meta. https://about.fb.com/news/2022/05/metas-updated-privacy-policy/
Roughton, L. (2021). Informational Self-Determination in Context: Privacy and Data Protection in the Age of Big Data and Surveillance Capitalism. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:f18b8e56-b7cc-4b96-be09-e957d9592274/files/dns064650s
UN. (2018, April 16). Global anxiety deepens over online data and privacy protection – UN agency. UN News. https://news.un.org/en/story/2018/04/1007402
Zuboff, S. (2019). The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: the Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. Public Affairs.
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