Are we being watched?

Warning: This post is not about how to "discover" who is stalking you on Facebook , Instagram or whatever. Sorry to dissapoint.

Actually I'm going to talk about how one of the biggest social media sources tracks each and every one of our moves ... yes Facebook I'm talking about you. For some of you these are not news, because if you think about it , it kind of makes sense given that Facebook every now and then gives us Suggestions when it comes to Pages, Friends and Videos that they "think" we like.

Things you should pay attention to

Every now and then when you are navigating through the internet you will come across with some pages with the like or share button from facebook.



 If you see even the slightest sign of facebook on a web page means ... well... YOU ARE BEING WATCHED, regardless if you are logged in or not. Facebook places an individual cookie (In simple terms, cookies are just files that reside on your computer. Cookies are created when you visit a website. They are used to store bits of information about your interactions with the website) on your computer. This contains your individual facebook ID which is why it doesn't matter whether you are logged in or not. And well the tracking ID will basically contain all the information about what you are doing right now.

So summing it up , we are the ones feeding the algorithm with our information, and the best part. These cookies NEVER expire.

Consider this

I want you to understand that I'm talking exclusively of Facebook, and the information I just gave it's probably a 10% (or less) of what really happens within this social network. I'm starting my blog with this post because this is the origin of most of the things that happen around us. All of those memes we share, news and articles don't just pop up for us in our home page by randomness or just because, there's a reason why behind and I'm pretty sure that it has to do with the amount of information we share.

And trust me, I know that it sounds very logical but this got me thinking, are WE browsing through or social media or the social media is browsing through US?

Are you having a mind-blown moment? Because I am.

Also I want to emphasize that I'm not persuading you into stopping the use of social media, because I know that, given the world we live in today, it would be kind of impossible (although I know it isn't) I'm just trying to get you thinking into what you do in your computer, laptop or smartphone on a daily basis.  To look around you and see how things are changing. 

And if you see these changes and you don't know anything about them, educate yourself! If there's something you didn't understand in this post, and neither my web links helped you, google it! use any search engine you want, but don't stop yourself for going further in your education, because these little things are the ones that are going to change everything. Trust me. 

Play around with your Facebook settings, see if anything changes, if it does , ask yourself : Why? When? How? Technology lives within us now. Embrace it. And don't let it eat you by doing some security measures I'm going to mention next.

How do I stop it?

Browser extensions

uBlock Origin : This is one of the best blocking extensions out there.Specially for the social media trackers.
Privacy Badger: Uses an easy-to-manage system of colored sliders. Green means okay, Yellow means third-party tracking but necessary for a functioning web, Red means content and scripts have been disabled.

I'd probably suggest to try to use another browser, but I'm pretty sure that none of us will do that. But at least try installying these extensions. Do not feed social media with your information, this is really important at this precise moment ... elections are coming up and social media is about to change everywhere. Don't let Facebook decide what you want to see... make that choice yours.

While I was doing my research for writing this blog, I came to the realisation that I was very unaware of all of the things that happen in the background, but most importantly, things I didn't know. And I think that I'm not the only one that has come with this type of realisation, which is why I encourage you to read always, if there's something in this post that I didn't explain and still you couldn't find your answer in the links below I encourage you to do your own research, to educate yourself.

Coming up

Did you see what I did there? That was a brief introduction for my next topic. I will be talking about Bots, an analysis of why they exist, how they attack and how to not let them fool us and about the huge influence social media HAS BEEN HAVING (yes this whole time social media has been pulling the strings around the world and we didn't know!) signs we missed and patterns we should be aware of.

See you at my next post!

References
https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/facebook-tracking-stop/
https://www.eff.org/privacybadger
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin/cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm?hl=en