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Your data is important—to you but also to corporations. Apps may sell your data and build profiles about you.
How do you fight back and reclaim your privacy? You need to delete apps that vacuum up your personal information. That includes getting rid of your accounts completely and requesting they delete your private data. Here’s where to start.
We’ll begin with the most obvious. Everyone knows that TikTok collects a lot of information about its users. Nonetheless,Business of Appsreports that it still has 1.5 billion monthly active users.
Want to know how much it knows? You can download all the data TikTok has about you, including biometrics, financial information, and contents of your clipboard and messages. Afterwards, you’ll definitely want to delete it!
Similarly, few will be shocked to hear that Facebook has a repository of data about you. That includes if you use Messenger. And even if you don’t have Facebook, Meta, its parent company (which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp), has a shadow profile about you.
So what’s the point of deleting your account? It’s about damage limitation. Without a profile, friends can’t tag you in photos or posts; you no longer willingly offer up a list of all your likes; and personal identifiers will be lost, so you become part of a demographic, not an individual. Discord
Fewer people knew what Discord collects about its users. But then, many learned that the server-based service collects data sent via chats, including message contents and images. And those users began accusing Discord of being spyware.
It’s arguably not as bad as all that. Discord can share data with similar apps like Twitch so they work in conjunction with each other, but doesn’t appear to sell personal information on.
Still, anything shared with servers is owned by Discord and the service can detect any games you’re playing on your system.
Having a YouTube account is handy but not essential. Either way, the site and app can feed on your history, but deleting your account can mean YouTube knows a little less about you.
The video sharing platform is owned by Google and we all know how intrusive Google is. Your viewing history and comments are collated, so, combined with all its other services, the internet giant can create an accurate digital representation of you.
4Amazon Shopping
Consider how much Amazon knows about you. Based purely on your shopping history, the service can infer a great deal about you, your friendships, your relationships, your location, and more. Not to mention images, videos, and voice recordings.
You’ve likely seen ads from Amazon on social media recommending something you’ve looked at or spoken about. There’s debatewhether or not your smartphone listens to you, but either way, the idea surely makes you uneasy.
You can still use Amazon in your web browser, but deleting the app means it has less of a hold on you—and it might save you some money!
Of course, Amazon isn’t the only shopping service with a massive amount of information about its users. Wish, the cheap eCommerce platform, boasts that it’s “a leading mobile shopping app”, meaning it holds a lot of private data about millions of customers.
It seems proud of this hunger for information; onWish’s About page, it enthuses, “The more you browse and buy, the more awesome recommendations you get!”
These recommendations come at the cost of your purchase and browsing history, location, and any interactions you make with products on the service.
We just use PayPal to pay for goods and services, and to get paid. You might think that’s relatively harmless. But when lending company,OnDeck, investigated data collected by 200 business apps, it found that PayPal collected more data than any other finance app it reviewed.
Obviously, PayPal has your contact details, payment information, and transaction history. In addition to those, itsPrivacy Statementsays that, “We may draw inferences that reflect your behavior patterns and personal preferences, browsing and purchasing habits, and creditworthiness”.
Inferences are a big deal. Most apps can build a rough picture of who you are solely by making inferences based on how you use the platform. Let’s say you have a takeaway meal numerous times a week: from this, an app could presume you work long hours and don’t have time to prepare food. It might also mean you’re wealthy. That’s useful for advertisers to know.
In itsPrivacy Policy, DoorDash admits to making inferences about your “preferences, characteristics, psychological trends, predispositions, behavior, attitudes, intelligence, abilities, and aptitudes”.
Perhaps that won’t surprise you. You probably won’t be shocked to know it further collects browsing and purchase history, and shares info with third parties you link to it. You might, however, question why DoorDash collects “sensory” details like “Audio, electronic, visual, thermal, olfactory, or similar information”.
Dating is about opening up to someone. But with dating apps, you may be opening up more than you think. Think of everything on your profile, then factor in usage, location, and facial information.
Tinder’s parent company is Match Group, owner of similar apps like Hinge, Plenty of Fish, Match, OKCupid, and The League. So even if you’re only on one of these services, personal data can be shared between the others—not forgetting any other accounts you link like Instagram and Spotify. Dating services are one of theapp types you need to avoid if you care about privacy.
Match Group retains some data after you get rid of your account (i.e. anything they’re legally required to), but otherwise says they delete private data. That’s great news: why not take them up on their offer bydeleting Tinder permanently?
You have an Airbnb profile, no matter if you’re renting accommodation out yourself or solely looking for places to stay while on vacation. Behind the scenes, Airbnb collects more personal details than you might know.
Airbnb collects: any messages shared on the platform, photos and videos uploaded, interests (apparently to give people something to chat about when first talking), educational info, where you’ve been, browsing history, wishlist data, and anything quirky you’ve added like a “fun fact” or “most useless skill”.
Whether they be Airbnb or Facebook, these apps on your phone give you greater personalization. But is it really worth handing over all that private data?
