Surveillance and society
Just because there’s no one following you doesn’t mean you aren’t being tracked.
And at the same time, just because you live in an ostensibly free country doesn’t mean you should be blasé about privacy. Surveillance in all its forms is becoming widespread: CCTV, bodycams and contactless transactions are all handy ways for governments to track our activities in meatspace. But the trail of digital dust that our online activities leave behind is increasingly resembling the detritus left behind by the canal-cutting navvies of the 18th century.
The problem is that this trail, particularly on social media, isn’t optional. Back in the 18th century you could always find a private space in the woods, have a tête-àtête and be reasonably sure no one recorded it. That’s still true today – you just have to go further to find a secure space in the woods.
But in the digital world, every post you make and every interaction you have become a part of the network. The record is there: some of it public, some of it visible to your friends, but all of it ultimately indelible, and law enforcement have the right to ask social networks for data on an individual given a court order.
We don’t take issue with that; traditional, targeted surveillance has undone many criminals and criminal organisations and will continue to do so in future. Unchecked, indiscriminate, mass surveillance is a completely different animal, and we’re dubious if it’s actually that useful. Criminal investigations aside, the fact that this data is sold to advertisers – albeit in ‘anonymised’ form – is extremely worrisome.
If you’re concerned about privacy then one of the best things you can do is stop using these services; one company knowing so much about you should rightfully give you the heebie-jeebies. It’s hard to cut the cord – you’ll miss the fresh memes, you’ll miss the odd party, but on the plus side you’ll probably have a lot more free time to play with Linux. Anyway, if you’re not ready to let go of proprietary social networks you can still be a little more conscious about how you use them.
One of the most insidious aspects of these sites is how they track you across other sites, which use Like and Retweet buttons to boost engagement. This trickery is possible because the cookie that is set when you log in is visible from any tab that browser opens – and if you click those buttons then Facebook knows something about your activities outside of Facebook.
One drastic way around this is to segregate activities across different browsers. Unfortunately, if you use lots of different social networks in parallel this rapidly becomes untenable. You can achieve the same thing using Private Browsing/incognito mode, but this comes with the downside of not leaving any history, so you might never be able to find that hilarious cat picture again. Enter
Multi-account Container extension, which
keeps activity on one site entirely contained to a particular browser tab. There’s even a dedicated Facebook container extension, which will helpfully open any ‘Share on Facebook’ links you click outside of the container inside it, so you can still link those cat pics.