I love online shopping. On the Internet I can ponder over one pair of shoes a thousand times without any store clerk getting impatient. For that my mom isn’t quite comfortable with. She warns me about hackers stealing my identity from giving out my name, phone number, or home address. I always laugh at her paranoid personality and then brush it off. But honestly – she’s more correct than I’d like to admit.

Nowadays every step we take online is carefully monitored, traced and stored. All of this data is highly valued for advertisers to target potential customers, turning us into products. While separate parts of this data – gender, age, your likes and status updates, connections and club members – are worthless, once they are assembled and interpreted, the marketers can successfully paint a precise picture of you. With more than 2 billion monthly active users, a third of the world’s population, Facebook actively collaborates with affiliate data broker to create more efficient advertising channels. Last year, the Washington Post published on different 98 targeting options Facebook pulls from other companies to pinpoint the users’ identity. These numerous digital predictions which we give away on daily basis can not only be used to sell things, but even more importantly, to potentially sell a candidate. In case you’re wondering how to stop them from targeting you and to escape from the so-called “useful and relevant” advertisements, see what Facebook knows about you. Twitter is watching as well. Here’s to shut off Amazon figuring you out. Google, too, is built on serving advertisements.

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What does the Internet know about you? All the information you consume online is tracked cross sites.

The Chrome extension Data Selfie is created to dive deeper into how your Facebook activity is measured and interpreted. Based on the contents you looked at, clicked (through likes and links) and the time engagement in posts, the app categorizes you into personality profile groups using the machine learning algorithm Apply Magic Sauce developed by University of Cambridge. In terms of my Big 5 personality traits, I’m more conservative and competitive, and I’m more easily stressed than relaxed. It also classifies my Jungian personality type to ISTPs, Introverted Sensing Thinking Perceiving, who are suited to the field of engineering. It’s likely anyone who knows me would agree, to some extent. Given that these tools only scratch the surface of social network’s data curation, it’s disquieting to comprehend just how much information they have.

Even if you don’t have a social media profile, it doesn’t mean you are not out there. Simply log onto the Internet, you start leaving a larger digital footprint more than you think. Simulating what a website picks up, often times without ostensible consent, Webcay displays a cascade of data reported by your browser. Concerning the sensitive information browsers can monitor, Cooper Quintin, a security researcher for the Electronic Frontier Foundation told to The New York Times, “More than just being creepy, it’s a huge violation of privacy.”

We are being watched more than ever before, thanks to the relentless development of digital technology. While it’s possible to opt-out personalized advertising, changing data settings won’t remove you from advertisers’ audiences, as Twitter qualified. And even if you can trail data through apps and tools, you can’t reclaim all of your information because that’s something you agree to when you sign up for the services. What you can do is always be Internet aware as you fill out your personal details, interact with your News Feed, and browse the web.

Peer edited by Gabrielle Budziszewski.

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